What is wrong with Libertarianism.

Conservative Commentary ^ | 28 July 2002 | Peter Cuthbertson

[Tomalak]

Thought for the day

If you believe in a truly libertarian society, your only way to success is in working to build a society based upon traditional morality, shame and chastity. Contradictory? Actually, no. Given a little examination, it turns out to be rather obvious; almost self-evidently true. If you want to live in a country where every man supports himself rather than looking to the taxpayer, where crime is rare and so massive police powers, ID cards and DNA databases are superfluous, you will not do so on the back of the destructive policies of social liberalism.

Libertarians traditionally do not look to history for the sort of society they wish to build. But I sense that the famous passage with which AJP Taylor begins his English History 1914-1945 comes closest to the libertarian ideal: a place where the normal, sensible Englishman comes into contact with the state only through the post office and policeman. The United States that existed before FDR's massive extensions in state power is similarly the model of the sort of America that libertarians across the pond seek to build. What all successful societies in history with small states have had in common is a strictly moral populace. Victorian Britain could survive without a large state precisely because pious ideas of shame, duty and self-reliance ensured that people would look to themselves for what they needed, rather than the state, and because crime was low enough that the state did not need to seek all the powers it could summon to fight back.

One mistake far too many libertarians make is to associate traditional morality with big government, and hostility to freedom. The opposite is true. The more influence morality has over a man's conduct, the less need there is for the state to control it. Crime can be reduced by many police, many laws, tougher sentences and more guns. But most of all, to have a low crime society without an overbearing state, you need to fashion the sort of country whose people are inclined not to commit crime in the first place. Roger Scruton made this point as brilliantly as ever in his call to "Bring Back Stigma":

"The law combats crime not by eliminating criminal schemes but by increasing the risk attached to them; stigma combats crime by creating people who have no criminal schemes in the first place. The steady replacement of stigma by law, therefore, is a key cause of the constant increase in the number and severity of crimes."

To see morality as inimical to liberty, as a threat to libertarian ambitions, is the most statist thing one can do. It is to leave the state as the only thing to pick up the pieces when society fails to function.

It is no mere joke to say that at present libertarians are those who like the liberal society but hate paying for it. Take a recent column on paedophilia in America's leading Libertarian Magazine, Reason, entitled "Sins of the Fathers". Throughout the article, the message is clear: molesting kids is wrong, but 'merely' wanting to rape them is not. The article is a rebuke aimed at all those with a moral problem with lusting after children.

"The issue is not sexual attraction; it is sexual action...

Bibliophilia means the excessive love of books. It does not mean stealing books from libraries. Pedophilia means the excessive (sexual) love of children. It does not mean having sex with them, although that is what people generally have in mind when they use the term. Because children cannot legally consent to anything, an adult using a child as a sexual object is engaging in a wrongful act. Such an act is wrongful because it entails the use of physical coercion, the threat of such coercion, or (what comes to the same thing in a relationship between an adult and a child) the abuse of the adult’s status as a trusted authority.

Saying that a priest who takes sexual advantage of a child entrusted to his care "suffers from pedophilia" implies that there is something wrong with his sexual functioning, just as saying that he suffers from pernicious anemia implies that there something wrong with the functioning of his hematopoietic system. If that were the issue, it would be his problem, not ours."

I believe that the dominance such people seem to have over libertarianism is a source of much of its undeserved failure. Such arguments only make libertarians sound nasty, extreme, and frankly strange. They may explain their defence of paedophilia on the grounds of a philosophical tradition of 140 years standing, but most ordinary people do not see it that way: what they see is a political movement apparently sympathetic to a pervert. Similarly, attacking the welfare state on grounds of economic efficiency is productive before some, but to the majority, it just looks like greed: not wanting to help those in need. Unless one explains morally the evils of trapping people on welfare so that each time they make an economic advance there is a corresponding benefit cut, and of creating a state which appears to remove every citizen's private duty to others, how can one show that they are wrong to put this thinking down to greed?

So morality surely reduces the need for a large state. But does accepting the importance of morality in society mean a greater role for the state in other areas? I do not believe so. Let us look at the actual aims of social conservatives like Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens, Ann Widdecombe, Charles Moore, John Redwood, Roger Scruton and Theodore Dalrymple. How many can you name in mainstream journalism or politics who actually want to change the law to make homosexuality illegal, for example? I do not know of any. Again, we see the reality - the social "authoritarians" are not really authoritarian. They do not want new laws to stop immorality and crime: they want free people to choose to be good themselves. They want a country where virtue is praised and vice condemned.

Ultimately, the enemy of libertarians is state control, not self-control. Morality in ordinary life removes the need for the sort of huge state that politicians have built for us since the 1930s. The more people choose to be good of their own accord, the more convincingly one can question the need for an over-mighty government to keep them in line. But until libertarians give up their crusade against any idea of decent behaviour, I do not see them succeeding.

[FateAmenableToChange]

Great post. The problem I have with many fellow libertarians is that they refuse to accept that morality is important to the state. I forget who said that humanity must be controlled by God or by the state, but that statement perfectly encapsulates the dilemma facing libertarians - there has to be some means of controlling bad actors. The more morality you have, the fewer bad actors. The less morality, the more bad actors, and the greater need for laws to crush them beneath the heel of the state.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Well, that's the big question: Is it possible to have a moral society without that morality being reflected in and enforced by the law/state?

[Tomalak]

Indeed. The answer given here is that a small state is only possible if people are moral enough not to require government coercion.

[AdamSelene235]

Indeed. The answer given here is that a small state is only possible if people are moral enough not to require government coercion.

You're assuming the state will coerce people to do "good" things. States that acquire the power to control every detail of their subjects lives rarely use the power wisely.

Cromwell's England, the Taliban, the USSR, and Saudi Arabia spring to mind as examples.

[Tomalak]

Wasn't that the whole point of the article? That people need to be good all on their own, and you can only have a small state if they do.

[decimon]

There is something to be said for moral suasion but the U.S. has never been a particularly moral nation, in the religious sense, and has done just fine with minimal government. U.S. history is far more Barbary Coast than Norman Rockwell.

[ChadGore]

What is wrong with Libertarianism. ?

BOTH Libertarians will continue to argue that point while they BOTH loose elections.

[Lightnin]

Not to mention Cuba, China, most of sub-Saharan Africa and the state of Vermont in recent years.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

What's the William Penn quote?

Those who will not be ruled by God
will be ruled by tyrants.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

So you want to work for the repeal of all drug laws, laws against sodomy, oral sex, etc. and have people go "tsk tsk" instead?

[Tokhtamish]

To have a society of stigma, you must have a society where "what the neighbors will say" actually matters. You must have a society where most people spend their whole lives in one place surrounded by their families instead of a mobile, anonymous society. A society where reputations are fixed and once set can never really be changed. Where ostracism has terrible socioeconomic consequences.

It is not possible to restore Victorian social relations or the concept of "scandal". People do not want crime. But then again, they do not want to be stuck all their lives in miserable marriages, to be constantly watched and judged, or see the bastard stigma restored.

[AdamSelene235]

Wasn't that the whole point of the article?

The article is either obtuse or deliberately dishonest.

Given that they deliberately took Dr. Szasz's remarks on the nature of mental "illness" out of context to smear libertarians makes me think it is the later.

FYI, Szasz was arguing that the offending priests should have been charged with crimes rather than placed in treatments centers as they were not suffering from "illness" but were criminals.

Szasz's article is here :

http://reason.com/0208/fe.ts.sins.shtml

[AdamSelene235]

That people need to be good all on their own, and you can only have a small state if they do.

So you think a large, powerful state full of evil people will be just hunky dory?

I reject the dillema.

[Tomalak]

Those who will not be ruled by God will be ruled by tyrants.

Now there's wisdom.

I don't see how the article quoted the Libertarian out of context. He was implying that paedophilia is not an issue, only raping kids is. In fact, wanting to rape kids is immoral, and it is an issue, as the Thought for the day noted.

[tpaine]

Tell it to BOTH the RLC and JR:

REPUBLICAN LIBERTY CAUCUS POSITION STATEMENT

Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/rlc/721810/posts

[Tomalak]

You are pretty dumb if you don't understand what the article said. Pretty simply:

'You can have an immoral people, or you can have a small state, but you can't have both.'

The article was not advocating a big state and bad people: it wanted a small state and good people. Can't you see that?

[steve-b]

This argument assumes that the alternatives are limited to 1)convincing people to do X voluntarily or 2)having the state compel people to do X by force. However, in those areas which impinge upon mere preferences, not fundamental rights, one must admit the additional alternative of 3)accepting the fact that some people are going to do Y instead.

The basic moral principle that needs to be inclucated is found in the Notebooks of Lazarus Long:

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none of my business but--" is to place a period after the word "but."

[steve-b]

One mistake far too many libertarians make is to associate traditional morality with big government, and hostility to freedom.

This is not a mistake made by libertarians, but rather a fraud perpetrated by authoritarians who wish to elevate their personal preferences to the stature of moral law. To take obvious historical examples, prohibiting the sale of pictures of nekked wimmen and requiring stores to close on Sunday on spurious "moral" grounds degrades the term "morality", and thus makes it more difficult to invoke the concept legitimately.

Those who do wish to advocate real moral objections to (for example) businesses tied to organized crime then find themselves with the burden of cleaning the clintonized semantic swamp gunk off the term.

[steve-b]

Additionally, the basic point "The issue is not sexual attraction; it is sexual action..." ought to be considered an obvious truism. I could have sworn that I'd read dozens of threads on this forum denouncing, in the most strident terms, the concept of "Thought Crime".