BRITAIN'S BEST:

The new commentariat: A new wave of political bloggers is challenging Britain's old media pundits. But who are they, and which ones matter? (Oliver Burkeman, November 17, 2005, The Guardian)

Samizdata, arguably the grandfather of British political blogs, is operated from a large and dimly lit flat in a pristine mansion block in south-west London. There are a few computers at the back of the main room, but the dominant feature is a leather-lined drinks bar - installed, according to Samizdata's founder, Perry de Havilland, by a double agent, who knew the flat's former owner and who paid for it with money from both MI5 and the KGB. (The flat is also now the headquarters of the Big Blog Company, a consultancy run by some of the Samizdata bloggers, which advises businesses on how to exploit the phenomenon.)

A vintage pistol lying on a side-table gives a hint of the Samizdata attitude; a more modern gun appears in a photograph on the blog's front page, on top of a copy of The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper's anti-totalitarian polemic. "The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist Illuminati, who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and [private] property," the site says. It was originally named Libertarian Samizdata, but too many of those involved became unhappy with the label: characteristically for libertarians, it seems, they were uncomfortable subscribing to a group ideology. "We are ... a varied group made up of social individualists, libertarians, extropians, futurists, 'Porcupines', Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshippers ... cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe," the site now explains, unhelpfully.

As I arrive, De Havilland is laughing, nearly hysterically, at a blog by Oliver Kamm, a London hedge-fund manager and member of the "pro-war left" who now also writes a column for the Times. "Just marvellous," says De Havilland. "I was thinking of making it Samizdata quote of the day. It's something to the effect that, well, there's no point in denying that our involvement in Iraq has inflamed [Islamist totalitarian] opinion. Why should we deny it? It's something we should be proud of!"

September 11 caused many ideological fissures, of course. But it's a fair bet that the split in British libertarianism - hardly a prominent movement in the first place - is probably one of the least well known. Some libertarians opposed any military response to the attacks, on the grounds that armies are tools of governments, and government is largely a bad thing. Others supported the war in Afghanistan, and later the war in Iraq, as attempts to spread or safeguard liberty. "It was between those who said it was just another big-government thing," says De Havilland, "and those who said, 'Excuse me, guys, but these nutjobs are trying to f****ing kill us!'" Samizdata published its first entry on November 2 2001. "I look forward to hearing from all those out there in 'establishment punditland' who sneered at the effect of the US bombing," De Havilland wrote in an early posting as he watched the Taliban fall.

"Establishment punditland" was Samizdata's target from the start. In the US, the birthplace of blog culture, it was easy to see how almost any viewpoints expressed online were going to count as a breath of fresh air. All they needed to do to distinguish themselves was to diverge from the New York Times's establishment liberalism and from the ranting of rightwing talk radio. Britain's press, by contrast, has long been more politically diverse and unashamedly partisan, which may explain the blogs' lesser impact here. De Havilland's collaborator Adriana Cronin, who developed her vociferous views as a reaction to growing up in communist Czechoslovakia, laughs off suggestions that blogs might literally replace the mainstream media, but there is no disguising her passion. "If we had a slogan, it would be, 'We can't change the way news is written, but we can change the way people read the news.' So what we're saying is-"

"We're not competing with newspapers," De Havilland interrupts. (This is a habit of his, though it may also be a beneficial quality in a blogger: he isn't willing to wait before sounding off.) "But I tell you who we are in competition with, 100% direct competition, and that's your op-ed writers. We don't have a reporter in Kandahar, and you might, it's true - although in time we might have a blogger in Kandahar. But for the moment, sure: if your guy in Kandahar says X blew up Y, then X blew up Y. But when your editorial guy says, 'This is what it means,' that's when we say, 'Excuse me! You're completely wrong!'"

Our own blog grew, to some considerabl extent, out of this exchange with Mr. de Havilland:

From: "Orrin Judd"
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 21:30:47 -0500
To: pundit@instapundit.com, gillespie@reason.com, samizdata@cloister.dircon.co.uk
Cc: andrew@andrewsullivan.com, jonahemail@aol.com, virginia@dynamist.com
Subject: Libertarianism
Dear Fellas (and Lady) :

I'm very much interested in the argument that's brewing between the libertarian crowd (Nick Gillespie and most of the warbloggers) and cultural conservatism (with Mr. Goldberg so far the unlikely early representative). It's a discussion that is well worth having and I hope that it will blossom and continue.

Here's my two cents. In Mr. Gillespie's response to Mr. Goldberg, he suggests that libertarianism has replaced liberalism as the main threat to conservatism. But he also reveals libertarianisms fatal flaw--one it shares with liberalism--that it is based not on reality but on an idyllic view of Man. As he says :

[L]ibertarians do believe devoutly in something. They believe, writes Hayek, that 'to live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends. It is for this reason that to the liberal [libertarian] neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.'
-Really Strange Bedfellows : My roll in the hay with John Walker (Nick Gillespie, 12/14/01, Reason)

This faith, that others will allow you to do your own thing, while you do yours, is touching in its naivete, but completely delusional in practice.

Classic conservatism is instead based on Thomas Hobbes's view of Man in the State of Nature, as a selfish, violent, acquisitive beast. It therefore posits that governments arise as a means of securing our own physical safety, from one another. Some form of State is necessary to restrain our basest impulses, so each man sacrifices some of his own freedom in exchange for state imposed security from his fellow men. This scenario may be overly metaphorical, but it has the great advantage of at least being based on the human nature that we see before us every day.

Now, it is the very great (even singular) achievement of the Judeo-Christian West that we have managed to create a series of institutions--church, family, businesses, the Common Law, courts, etc.--which have collectively enabled us to internalize these restraints to a sufficient degree that we need less state authority than was once necessary to secure the peace. Our monotheism gave birth to an absolute morality and our near universal acceptance of the tenets of Judaism or Christianity placed these moral precepts at the very core of our culture. External authority then diminished in proportion to the internalization of these moral strictures (which are really the beliefs that cultural conservatism seeks to defend, mostly by conserving the institutions that inculcate them).

But the very success of conservatism has created a culture which is so peaceful and so morally heterogeneous that it has become possible for rival ideologies to spring up which premise themselves on the belief that man is innately peaceful, egalitarian, co-operative, etc. Thus, Marxism (and the rest of modern liberalism) supposes that in the state of nature we all sat around sharing whatever was lying about peacefully, and that we long to return to such a blessed state. This belief, of course, ran aground as soon as those who have were given the opportunity to give to those who don't (from each according to his ability...). They refused; and the state was forced to take by main force. Freedom disappeared and though equality was indeed imposed, it turned out to be an equality of squalor. Looking about them and realizing that we in the West had remained relatively free and that, though the distribution of wealth was unequal, even our poor had more than them, the poor benighted souls upon whom this experiment was conducted eventually overthrew the utterly failed system.

Meanwhile, comes libertarianism,which abjures morality, yet somehow expects Man without morals to behave in what is fundamentally a moral manner. No one can argue with the beauty of the idea that men might willingly allow each other to go their own ways, but neither can one look around and believe that such a world is possible, except in the imagination. Like liberalism, libertarianism is utopian rather than realistic. It is all well and good for well-educated, middle and upper class, white males (the overwhelming majority of libertarians) to sit around and hypothesize about a world in which they are left free to enjoy their plenty, but what's in it for the have nots? And since most of the planet is still have-nots, what do you think would happen to this little claque of rich white boys once they'd gotten rid of traditional morality and the other restrictive residue of Western culture? You've gotta be thinking of the white farmers in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) right now, don't you.

In fact, libertarianism is really just respectable anarchism and there's a uniform feature that one notes about societies that plunge into anarchy; the people pray for the restoration of order, any kind of order. This is why even we in the States originally welcomed the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan. Even totalitarianism was preferable to the chaos that reigned before they took control. No one believes in libertarianism where it actually prevails. It is really only a phenomenon of those societies where cultural conservatism has taken such firm hold that even people, like most libertarians, who deny the validity of Judeo-Christian morality, have nonetheless been shaped by it.

Regards,
OJ
--------------------
Orrin C. Judd
Writer-in-Residence
www.brothersjudd.com
--------------------
RESPONSE : from Perry de Havilland at Samizdata
RESPONSE : to Perry from OJ

> From: Samizdata
> Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 05:19:40 +0000
> To: Orrin Judd
> Subject: Re: Goldberg Vs. Gillespie

>I'm very much interested in the argument that's brewing between the
>libertarian crowd (Nick Gillespie and most of the warbloggers) and
>cultural conservatism (with Mr. Goldberg so far the unlikely early
>representative). It's a discussion that is well worth having and I hope
>that it will blossom and continue.
>
>Here's my two cents. In Mr. Gillespie's response to Mr. Goldberg, he
>suggests that libertarianism has replaced liberalism as the main threat
>to conservatism. But he also reveals libertarianisms fatal flaw--one it
>shares with liberalism--that it is based not on reality but on an idyllic
>view of Man.
(snip)
>This faith, that others will allow you to do your own thing, while you do
>yours, is touching in its naivete, but completely delusional in
>practice.

That is false because that is certainly not what most libertarians believe. In fact, one of the reasons most libertarians are so strongly supportive of an armed civilian population is that they think quite the contrary. It is not just government libertarians wish to be armed against.

>Classic conservatism is instead based on Thomas Hobbes's view of Man in the
>State of Nature, as a selfish, violent, acquisitive beast. It therefore posits that >governments arise as a means of securing our own physical safety, from one another.
>Some form of State is necessary to restrain our basest impulses, so each man >sacrifices some of his own freedom in exchange for state imposed security from his >fellow men.
> This scenario may be overly metaphorical, but it has the great advantage of
>at least being based on the human nature that we see before us every day.

Sure, that's ol' Hobbes, whom I always did think was nasty, brutish and short. That is fine and dandy but it is also pretty much a caricature of what humans are really like. They are indeed violent at times, but few libertarians are pacifists or willing to turn the other cheek to the violence of others. As for selfish and acquisitive, very few libertarians would disagree with you. However we do not see that as a vice, for it is from these two qualities that the most important drive of all comes: self interest. Societies are not the product of our will and reason, but rather of evolutionary processes that work to maximize self interest. Similarly morality that works survives, but a utilitarian justificationism is not enough (or even possible really) if a dogmatic irrationalism is not to poison a society.

>Now, it is the very great (even singular) achievement of the Judeo-Christian
>West that we have managed to create a series of institutions--church, family, >businesses, the Common Law, courts,etc.--which have collectively enabled us to >internalize these restraints to a sufficient degree that we need less state authority >than was once necessary to secure the peace. Our monotheism gave birth to an >absolute morality and our near universal acceptance of the tenets of Judaism or
>Christianity placed these moral precepts at the very core of our culture. External >authority then diminished in proportion to the internalization of these moral >strictures (which are really the beliefs that cultural conservatism seeks to defend, >mostly by conserving the institutions that inculcate them).

Many libertarians are indeed also Christians or Jews. Certainly the Libertarian Alliance in Britain, of which I am a member, contains many of both. It also contains Muslims, Hindus, Atheists and Agnostics. Many are admirers of Aquinas, though mostly because of his Aristotelean core, rather than his Christianity. Most libertarians I know are also great admirers of many aspects of western culture. It is a grave fallacy many make when attempting to critique libertarianism to fail to understands that the desire of social, rather than state, solutions, lies at the heart of practical classical liberal (libertarian) word views, not some strange society of isolated individuals relying on good will. We believe in charity, which is the product of morality, rather than state aid, which is the product of theft.

>But the very success of conservatism has created a culture which is so
>peaceful and so morally heterogeneous that it has become possible for
>rival ideologies to spring up which premise themselves on the belief that
>man is innately peaceful, egalitarian, co-operative, etc. Thus,
>Marxism (and the rest of modern liberalism) ...

I see you subscribe to the Chomsky use of the term liberal so popular in North America. I prefer the term socialist because I am a liberal in the classical sense of the word.

>...supposes that in the state of nature we all sat around sharing whatever was lying >about peacefully, and that we long to return to such a blessed state. This
>belief, of course, ran aground as soon as those who have were given the
>opportunity to give to those who don't (from each according to his
>ability...). They refused; and the state was forced to take by main force.
> Freedom disappeared and though equality was indeed imposed, it turned out
>to be an equality of squalor. Looking about them and realizing
>that we in the West had remained relatively free and that, though the
>distribution of wealth was unequal, even our poor had more than them,
>the poor benighted souls upon whom this experiment was conducted eventually
>overthrew the utterly failed system.
>
>Meanwhile, comes libertarianism, which abjures morality, yet somehow expects
>Man without morals to behave in what is fundamentally a moral manner. No one can >argue with the beauty of the idea that men might willingly allow each other to go >their own ways, but neither can one look around and believe that such a world is >possible, except in the imagination.

Except that is not what any libertarians think. Morals can only be valid if they are based upon objective reality, but if they are, they cannot be ignored. The morality of fiercely defending several property and the morality (and self-evident utility) of helping others to do the same absolutely permeates modern libertarian ideas. I suggest you read Rothbard's 'The Ethics of Liberty' or several of Popper's works if you think the essence of libertarianism is not objective morality. Libertarianism is ALL about morality. Conservatism/Socialism are merely about utility, and using force to achieve ends collectively chosen ends: morality does not enter into it.

>Like liberalism, libertarianism is utopian rather than realistic. It is all well and >good for well-educated, middle and upper class, white males (the overwhelming >majority of libertarians) to sit around and hypothesize about a world in which they >are left free to enjoy their plenty, but what's in it for the have nots?

Much of my time is spent in Central Europe and the Balkans, and I shall be forwarding your e-mail to my good friends at the Czech Liberalni Institue and to some of my Bosnian and Croatian libertarian confreres. Please do not take it as an insult when I tell you much laughter will result when they read that last section. To say you have a bizarre view of us is putting it mildly. You need to mix in wider circles methinks.

>And since most of the planet is still have-nots, what do you think would happen to >this little claque of rich white boys once they'd gotten rid of traditional
>morality and the other restrictive residue of Western culture? You've gotta
>be thinking of the white farmers in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) right now, don't you.

Much of traditional morality has an objective basis and what on earth makes you think that Libertarians want to destroy it all?

>In fact, libertarianism is really just respectable anarchism and there's a
>uniform feature that one notes about societies that plunge into anarchy; the people >pray for the restoration of order, any kind of order.

Certainly many libertarians regard anarchy as 'an ideal but unachievable state' (to quote a speaker at a Libertarian Alliance meeting a few weeks ago). Most however are what we libertarians called minarchists: i.e. they are classical liberals.

> This is why even we in the States originally welcomed the Taliban's
>rise to power in Afghanistan. Even totalitarianism was preferable to the
>chaos that reigned before they took control. No one believes in
>libertarianism where it actually prevails. It is really only a phenomenon
>of those societies where cultural conservatism has taken such firm
>hold that even people, like most libertarians, who deny the validity of
>Judeo-Christian morality, have nonetheless been shaped by it.

Judeo-Christian morality meaning what? Explain to me what useful aspects of Judeo-Christian morality it is that you think libertarians are trying to jettison unwisely as it is hard for me to really know what you mean. I find much of what you are saying bears little resemblance to actual common libertarian views, though of course we are all hyphenated-libertarians. Certainly libertarians reject irrational restrictions on their behaviour which are imposed by force. Yet we are also steeped in the cultures from which we come from and there is nothing contradictory about that. They way you seem to be representing us I would expect to see naked libertarians walking about all the time. Yet I have never seen that. A libertarian may think it is unreasonable to imprison a person for walking naked down a street but that does not mean he want to do so himself. A libertarian will reject forcing a woman to wear a burqa, yet surely she has the right to do so if she wishes to allow social pressures for that to control her actions. Will American conservatives stop her on the street and remove it at gunpoint if she refuses? The difference is social pressure vs the violence of law. Less government does not lead to chaos if culture is allowed to fulfil its proper role. Certainly during my time in the Balkans 1992-1996, culture, not state, was the glue that held society together. Although Croatian identity is inextricably linked with a Catholic identity, it was really only in a cultural sense as Croatia and Herzegovina are in reality profoundly secular societies.

You seem to be confusing us with some sort of nihilistic political biker gang. It just ain't so. Your arguments are coherent but are pointed at an empty part on the political landscape unoccupied by anyone I am familiar with.

Perry de Havilland ...- (via Samizdata)
--

_____________________
Visit Libertarian Samizdata if you dare at: http://samizdata.blogspot.com/ and discover that Bruce Willis is a wimp, why the King of Jordan is praiseworthy, how to survive a nuclear, chemical or biological attack and the way to convince people on the 'left' that libertarians are not the enemy.

From: "Orrin Judd"
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 07:00:00 -0500

Thank you very much for your response; is it okay if I post it here (www.brothersjudd.com)?

* I will have to read up on moralistic libertarianism, which does not appear to be the variant that most American Libertarians are espousing. It appears to offer an easy out. because it allows you to believe in traditional morality (Judeo-Christianity) precisely because it is traditional, has evolved. I'd not realized that there was such a heavy reliance on evolutionary psychology in some Libertarian thought. It remains unclear to me how morality would arise or be maintained in the absence of our religious teachings, but it's certainly a significant step up from the kind of extreme individualism that characterizes much of the libertarianism you find online. Unfortunately, from what I find online (which may well be skewed) it would appear that Rothbard is in decline among libertarians generally.

* Likewise, your embrace of social solutions would alleviate many of my concerns. I think you would have to acknowledge that there is, at least among some (many) libertarians, such hostility to religion that they tend to reflexively denigrate the very religious institutions that have provided such social assistance and will again in the future, if we are successful in reducing government.

* I was using liberal in the modern American sense, which as you point out is really just a form of statism. Conservatives here often write plaintively about the appropriation of the classic term Liberal by the Left, but it seems futile to fight about that at this late date. Since at least the 1950s and Russell Kirk's seminal book The Conservative Mind, what was once Liberalism has become Conservatism here in the States. Of course, we find it appalling that the Tories are called the Conservative Party, since with the exception of Margaret Thatcher, we would consider them, with their failure to oppose the EU and National Health and other forms of big government, to be a party of the Left.

* I hope I didn't seem to be dismissing Man's selfishness out of hand. We conservatives too believe it to be a useful characteristic and the driving factor in the success of capitalism. I merely meant to note that this selfishness is so powerful that it has to be restrained, either by government or morality or both, else we would all be at each others' throats.

* I'd defend, to the death, your right to walk around your house naked, but at the point where you want to wander around my children's playground naked, I'd either stop you myself or have the police remove you. And, as you suggest, I'd hope that social reproval and pressure would suffice to get you to dress before you left the house.

* It sounds like many of our disagreements actually arise from the surprising (to me, at least) differences in our cultures. Britain (I assume you are British?)
does not appear to have a serious conservative opposition anymore, and your kind of libertarianism (classical Liberalism) is a critique of both Labour and the accomodationist Tories. But, here in America, this critique pretty much defines the Republican Party--minimal government, free market capitalism, personal liberty, traditional morality, strong social institutions. On the other hand, that doesn't leave much room for American libertarianism, so it actually tends to end up opposing even morality and non-governmental institutions as unfairly coercive.

At any rate, keep fighting the good fight, and thanks again for your response,
OJ

Dear Bros,

** I will have to read up on moralistic libertarianism, which does not
appear to be the variant that most American Libertarians are
espousing. It appears to offer an easy out. because it allows you to
believe in traditional morality (Judeo-Christianity) precisely
because it is traditional, has evolved.

--------------

I am really not sure which flavour of libertarianism you are referring to. Generally it is not society or morality that libertarians rail against but rather literal civil coercion, manifest most prominently in the modern state's endless smothering spew of regulations regarding every aspect of civil society.

--------------
** I'd not realized that there was such a heavy reliance on evolutionary
psychology in some Libertarian thought.

--------------

That is the essence of Hayek's views of society and it is hard to overstate his influence in most libertarian circles (and conservative circles too, of course).

--------------

** It remains unclear to me how morality would arise or be maintained in the absence of our religious teachings,

--------------

Libertarian morality is the consequence of a critically rational objective understanding of the nature of the world, but morality itself arose because it serves a social need. Moral societies prospered better than ones which did not develop (or acquire) the memes of a progressively more sophisticated objective moral basis for what we do.

Hence the hostility found in libertarian circles to subjective moral relativists like Chomsky or Marx, to name but two. Societies which are steeped in moral subjectivism are societies whose philosophies are based on subjective epistemological foundations, trapped in an endless spiral of philosophical infinite regression, seemly irrefutable yet meaningless solipsism and stunted by the subjective values that negate the very concept of truth.

To put it crudely, libertarians support morality because it works and it works because valid morality is objectively correct, which is why it evolved in the first place! Ultimately memes based on subjective fantasies tend not to come out on top in the long run.

--------------

** but it's certainly a significant step up from the kind of extreme
individualism that characterizes much of the libertarianism you find
online. Unfortunately, from what I find online (which may well be
skewed) it would appear that Rothbard is in decline among
libertarians generally.

--------------
With regard to 'on-line libertarianism', I would say objectivism (Ayn Rand) is probably the largest single (though not majority) influence and she was certainly an advocate of objective morality. But I think you are quite incorrect that Rothbard or the other advocates of libertarianism on an entirely moral basis are in retreat. Quite the contrary.

A key essence of libertarianism is an objective epistemological approach to knowledge. Certainly, I realise that many libertarians would be hard pressed to spell, let alone describe objective epistemology. Like all political/philosophical movements, some people, maybe even the majority, fall into supporting them via a purely deontological appeal to intuition... they believe something just because 'it seems right'. I do not expect to see thousands of members of the US Libertarian Party marching down the streets of Peoria waving copies of 'The Ethics of Liberty' any time soon. Yet regardless of the fact I doubt all the libertarians with NORML, and their ilk, are thinking in those terms, the libertarian theorists that one meets across the world, from New Zealand to Sweden, from the Czech Republic to Los Angeles, from Havana (yes) to London, do indeed quote Rothbard's and Rand's ethical ideas at each other. The fact is, it is a profoundly moral centred view of the world, not nihilism, that drives people from both the socialist left and conservative right, into the arms of libertarianism. Examine any of libertarianism perpetually re-branding variants and at their core, you will find an objective world view staring back at you from behind all the complex verbiage. For example, although I have not got around to reading Virginia Postrel's book 'The Future and its Enemies' yet, I detect a strong influence of Karl Popper's conjectural objectivity in her on-line remarks and in 'Dynamism' generally from what I have seen thus far (Dynamism is her form of hyphenated-libertarianism).

To obey a law simply because it is the law is not to take a moral view at all: that is just the acknowledgement that law is backed by force. To act morally as a Christian, one must have free will to not act morally or else we are just God's marionettes: God playing with himself. Christian morality says that we are given free will and thus must exercise that free will in an ethical manner. Libertarians are saying exactly the same thing. If I want to kill a person whom I detest but do not do so purely because I fear I will be caught and go to jail, that is not a moral action on my part, merely a utilitarian exercise in cost-benefit analysis. If I decline to murder them because I regard it as an immoral act, THAT is a moral choice. Yet by following that logic, libertarians are accused of being nihilists! By that logic, then so are Christians, regardless of their politics!

Like conservatives but unlike socialists, most libertarians are not willing to just reject 'traditional' morality just because it is traditional. Rather they understand that much of it is objectively true and evolved for precisely that reason. They will only wisely reject it if it is objectively untrue. However this means that unlike conservatives,whilst there may be a presumption of deference to tradition, there is no presumption of that deference being required by law in most cases.

Theorising on morality along these lines is pretty much what Hayek did and he is almost as influential with conservatives as with libertarians (Hayek did not regard himself as a conservative, however). Personally I subscribe to the 'falliblist' approach of Popper and Bartley, taking views of rational critical preferentialism (or to use Bartley's equally ungainly term 'Pancritical Rationalism') when evaluating not just morality but pretty much everything from aesthetics to quantum theory.

If you are interested in a painless introduction to Bartley, the lest well know of that trio, and who was most certainly a Christian, let me recommend the excellent Rafe Champion's remarks on here.

If I have some time, I will write you a 'quick and dirty guide to hyphenated-libertarianism' to demonstrate the wide variations of just what 'libertarian' really means in all its many-splendoured forms.

--------------

** Likewise, your embrace of social solutions would alleviate many of
my concerns. I think you would have to acknowledge that there is, at
least among some (many) libertarians, such hostility to religion that
they tend to reflexively denigrate the very religious institutions
that have provided such social assistance and will again in the
future, if we are successful in reducing government.

--------------

It is certainly true that many libertarians are atheists or agnostics, yet that is *far* from being a defining characteristic of libertarianism. Many are also Christians, Jews, Muslims (yes) and just about everything under the sun. To be honest, I have not met many libertarians who have a problem with faith based charities as they are in many ways the concretisation of the sort of social community alternatives to the dependency infantilism of state aid. I have a profoundly atheist libertarian chum here in London who works as a volunteer at a Servite Charity several hours a week and has nothing but admiration for this Catholic organisation, based as it is on non-coercion, freely given charity and genuine free association.

--------------

** I was using liberal in the modern American sense, which as you
point out is really just a form of statism. Conservatives here often
write plaintively about the appropriation of the classic term Liberal
by the Left, but it seems futile to fight about that at this late
date. Since at least the 1950s and Russell Kirk's seminal book The
Conservative Mind, what was once Liberalism has become Conservatism
here in the States. Of course, we find it appalling that the Tories
are called the Conservative Party, since with the exception of
Margaret Thatcher, we would consider them, with their failure to
oppose the EU and National Health and other forms of big government,
to be a party of the Left.

--------------
I think the whole 'left' and 'right' thing, whilst it has some utility, can also be profoundly misleading. To me, 'conservatism' is often 'statism-lite' and thus differs from socialism only in degree rather than essence (no, I am not equating the two, just putting them on the same continuum, as I would with assault and murder).

--------------
** I hope I didn't seem to be dismissing Man's selfishness out of
hand. We conservatives too believe it to be a useful characteristic
and the driving factor in the success of capitalism. I merely meant
to note that this selfishness is so powerful that it has to be
restrained, either by government or morality or both, else we would
all be at each others' throats.

--------------

My view is that self interest is actually best served by NOT being at each other's throats. And for those who insist on that anyway... well I never said I was a pacifist (which is itself just 'nihilism-without-balls'). Libertarians do not believe in chaos (even the anarchist flavour) but rather a more spontaneous order.

--------------
** I'd defend, to the death, your right to walk around your house
naked, but at the point where you want to wander around my children's
playground naked, I'd either stop you myself or have the police
remove you. And, as you suggest, I'd hope that social reproval and
pressure would suffice to get you to dress before you left the house.

--------------
Quite so. Libertarianism is about the liberty to make choices and reap the consequences of those choices. Any 'libertarian' who acts in a threatening way to other people (such as wandering around your children's playground naked) is not just missing the point, he is about to discover the 'consequences' half of that equation. No rational libertarian would have a problem with that concept. Of course every philosophy has its fair share of irrational adherent, even ones predicated upon critical rationalism!

--------------
** It sounds like many of our disagreements actually arise from the
surprising (to me, at least) differences in our cultures. Britain (I
assume you are British?) does not appear to have a serious conservative opposition anymore, and your kind of libertarianism (classical Liberalism) is a critique
of both Labour and the accomodationist Tories.

--------------

There is some truth to that. However I am the very embodiment of what Marx called a 'rootless cosmopolitan', though in reality I have very deep roots indeed... they just do not happen to stay in the convenient national boundaries so beloved of control centred states and socialists of both 'left' and 'right'. I am English on my fathers side and American on my mothers side, with extended family in Britain, Australia and North America. I have lived and worked in Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Netherlands, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Florida, Nevada, California, South Africa and Ghana. I am 40 something.

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** But, here in America, this critique pretty much defines the Republican Party--minimal government, free market capitalism, personal liberty, traditional
morality, strong social institutions.

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You describe a party which must then have reduced the size of government during the Reagan and Bush(x2) administrations. The figures suggest otherwise alas. If you seriously think the Republican party is done more than just slow the rate at which Leviathan is putting on weight, methinks you are kidding yourself. Dick Armey et al (i.e. libertarian leaning conservatives) are not the party's mainstream by any stretch of the imagination. Just how many federal departments have actually closed down under the Republicans? To which party does the president who has agreed to corporate welfare payments to the structurally unsound parts of the US airline industry belong?

That said, I have often felt the US Libertarian Party is a mistake (Dale Amon, one of my co-editors on the Samizdata disagrees with me strongly on that. Although he lives in Belfast at the moment, he is American and an LP member). I think that if libertarians are going to participate in what I regard as a fundamentally illegitimate democratic process of proxy theft, they would be better off subverting the Republican Party into more libertarian ways (i.e. trying to take it back to America's radical Jeffersonian classical liberal roots).

For me, I take the view that the job of political libertarians is not to drag the name of libertarianism through the mud of party politics in order to achieve an improbable top down American 'perestroika' (i.e. what the USLP is trying to do) but rather to work to make much of the state's apparatus of coercion simply irrelevant.
Every time you pay cash or use the Internet in order to avoid taxes, every time you break the speed limit on an empty road, every time you use the Internet to download 'illegal munitions grade' encryption software, every time you arbitrate a dispute rather than involve the state, every time you open an off-shore bank account, or set up an off-shore company or transfer money via a fei qian (or hawala) rather than via a regulated banking system, every time you refuse to register a firearm, every time you build on YOUR property out-of-code, every time you hire someone's freely given labour 'off the books', you are making a statement that you will simply not cooperate with laws that have no moral basis. By refusing to blindly pay your taxes, register your weapons and accept the state as a super-owner of your property (which is the heart of fascism, by the way) you are refusing to finance and acquiesce in your own oppression. THAT is the sort of thing I advocate libertarians doing. Thus the most widespread unconsciously libertarian practice in the United States is the humble, and untaxed, yard sale.

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** On the other hand, that doesn't leave much room for American libertarianism, so it actually tends to end up opposing even morality and non-governmental institutions as unfairly coercive.

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Which non-governmental institutions did you have in mind that have attracted libertarian ire? And what sort of morality are you referring to?

Perry de Havilland ...-
--

Dear Perry :

*Well, libertarianism is no different than conservatism in its opposition to government regulation. The question is really whether libertarianism is premised on a belief that in the absence of any state law enforcement mechanisms human beings would be decent towards one another. From what I've read, it appears this is the position of many libertarians.

*Evolutionary Psychology : setting aside the question of evolution itself, doesn't evolutionary psychology tend to merely validate things as they are? Libertarianism, like the dodo bird, exists nowhere. It has been selected out in favor of big government. If you believe in evolution of even human institutions, then why fight the inevitable?

*Morality : I think you are begging the question. Of course libertarians support traditional Western morality; after all, it makes libertarian idealism seem feasible. The question is, once you undermine the religions that created that morality and the government institutions that enforce it, how do you get people to behave morally?

*For a believer in God, it is wrong to kill not merely because God says not to, but because the lives of other human beings have absolute value. What is the purely objective libertarian basis for me valuing someone else's life?

*I see a rather extensive common ground developing here around two big issues : reducing government and cultivating voluntary social organizations. Have you read any of the stuff by communitarians (Etzioni, Benjamin Barber, Robert D. Putnam, etc.)? Unfortunately, they tend to depend on government to develop the community organizations they are talking about, but they are very good on the need for such community-based institutions.

*The difficulty that conservatives (Reagan, Armey, George W., etc.) have had in reducing government is hardly an indicator that they aren't serious in their beliefs. Rather, it tends to confirm that the great mass of people have little interest in liberty. They willingly choose to be unfree in exchange for having government take care of them.

Two quotes in that regard :

One from Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813). the Scottish jurist and
historian, who said that :

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess
from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes
for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public
treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose
fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the
world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations
have progressed through this sequence:

from bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage.

and one from Albert Jay Nock's Memoirs of a Superfluous Man :

Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility
and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly
argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to
their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime the citizen,
like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is
divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told. He takes
what is allotted to him, obeys orders, and beyond that he has no care.
Perhaps, then, this is as much as the vast psychically-anthropoid
majority are up to, and a status of permanent irresponsibility under
collectivism would be most congenial and satisfactory to them.

*The specific fights that are cropping up here between conservatives and libertarians tend to revolve around issues like drugs, abortion, euthanasia, cloning, sexual practices, etc. These all implicate the questions of human dignity and the value of human life, with conservatives believing that life has absolute value and libertarians suggesting that each of us is free to define the value of life as we will and to treat others in any way that they will accede to. And because the main opposition to these practices tends to come from religiously/morally based conservatism, libertarians here are fond of comparing such religious and moral objections to a kind of Talibanesque totalitarianism.

Thanks again for your responses. I'm finding them very helpful and I've got the whole discussion, in hopes that others may also find it useful.

Regards,
OJ

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 16, 2005 11:34 PM