Friday, July 13, 2007

Cato Unbound Cont'd   [Jonah Goldberg]

Matt Yglesias responds to Brink Lindsey here. And it's nice to see he pretty much agrees with me that the social agenda of liberalism is by no means libertarian. He writes:

I largely agree with what Brink Lindsey has to say. Except, unfortunately, for the parts about libertarianism. His observation that "traditional attitudes about race relations, sex, the role of women in society, the role of religion in public life, the permissible limits of artistic expression, and the nature of American cultural identity have taken a beating" is correct, and I share his apparent view that this is a good thing. Is it a libertarian thing? I tend to think not. Certainly Barry Goldwater, probably the most libertarian major party presidential nominee we're likely to see, didn't think much of a giant pile of regulations telling people what they can and can't do with their own property called the Civil Rights Act. And, as a result, Goldwater's highly libertarian 1964 campaign found that its core supporters were the white supremacists of the Deep South who saw libertarianism as a good way to blunt the onrushing tide of cultural change that hoped to use state authority to build a new, more racially tolerant America.

But, of course, the white supremacists (and the libertarians) lost that battle and the liberals won, building one important piece of the new, less traditional America that Lindsey observes we live in. Nor has the feminist movement's success in transforming traditional attitudes about sex and the role of women been innocent of un-libertarian deployment of state power. Discriminating against women in the workplace has become not just inefficient or impolite but actually illegal thanks to a series of heavy-handed regulatory initiatives that no libertarian could in good conscience endorse.

Similarly, the gay rights movement does indeed want gay couples to be unmolested in their private conduct. But their demands go far beyond that. They want to regulate who you may employ, who you may rent a house to, etc., etc., etc. — not merely a state that refrains from discriminating, but a state that takes the lead in fighting discrimination.

To me, this is all to the good. And if Cato Institute employees want to endorse it, that's all to the good as well. But it's not libertarianism.

Me: What's refreshing about this is that Yglesias is honestly and correctly admitting that liberals have no problem imposing their morality on others via a powerful and intrusive state. I wish that most  liberals were as honest.  If liberals want to complain about conservative social engineering, that's entirely legitimate (when true, of course). But please don't tell me that your objection is to social engineering per se. Liberals and progressives before them wrote the book on social engineering and even the most comstockish Republicans are pale imitators. 

I also thing this is particularly well-put even if I disagree with the spin he puts on the culturally  conservative outlook etc.:

Somewhere along the line, however, at least some libertarians – Lindsey included – seem to have decided that they don't like being handmaidens of a dour, reactionary outlook on culture and, indeed, are more interested in promoting cosmopolitan individualism as a way of life than in promoting a specific doctrine about the legitimate scope of state authority. A good companion to Lindsey's essay is Reason editor Nick Gillespie's February 2005 column in which he concedes that the sense in which Kansas is "freer" than New York City isn't actually a sense he's interested in. Kansas has fewer business regulations, but New York is more conducive to cosmopolitan individualism. This turn is, as far as I'm concerned, all to the good – cosmopolitanism is an excellent thing, as is individualism, whereas libertarianism is a bit silly. 

07/13 10:23 AMShare