Can A Libertarian Find True Happiness In The Blues?

by tristero

My libertarian cyber-friend Mona has a very interesting guest post on the demonization of Michael Schiavo by the extreme right. From my standpoint there are several things that strike me as remarkable about it.

First of all is her underlying assumption that there is a controversy about this that needs to be addressed. In liberal and even centrist-right circles, the obscene behavior of the mainstream GOP during Schiavo- that’s correct, dear close-reading reader: “mainstream GOP” is today a synonym for the American far right – is simply accepted as fact (Joan Didion’s dismayingly bizarre dissent to this consensus is the only exception I know of, and there were extenuating circs for that which had nothing to do with Schiavo). In any event, knowing a little about Mona’s politics, it is not surprising she sides with the angels on this one.

Truly astonishing, imo, is that she seems open to exploring the possibility that her libertarian politics are closer to the modern Democratic Party than the Republican. And that brings up a host of very interesting questions that cluster around two axes: (1) Is the Democratic Party congenial to libertarianism?; (2) If so, is that a good thing for liberals?

(Full disclosure compels me to remind you of something I’ve mentioned several times in the past. I am a registered Independent and not a Democrat. In reality, I’ve never voted other than Democratic, Liberal Party, or Working Families Party – the candidates overlap quite often in New York. )

Let’s start with what Mona means by “libertarian.” In this post, she writes:

We libertarians are frequently caricatured as “Republicans who just want to smoke dope and have orgiastic sex.” Actually, we hold fealty to many serious general principles, including: the rule of law, basic human rights, federalism, and, yes, the individual adult’s liberty interest in making all manner of personal decisions sans interference from the state; we are also usually skeptical of moralistic social crusades.

A quick skim of this list reveals considerable agreement (agreeance? Calling the grammar police) with liberal values. With some serious caveats:

“Basic human rights” appears to be code for “affirmative action stinks.” I won’t rehearse the arguments pro/con affirmative action here other than to reassure readers that I fully support affirmative action (even if it produces the occasional Clarence Thomas) and don’t think American culture has changed enough vis a vis racism and poverty since the 60’s and 70’s to merit its abandonment – it can always be improved, however.

The point Mona is finessing here is, of course, not affirmative action per se but more general objections to the kind of social engineering liberals are often accused of advocating in their latte-addled interfering way. What libertarians fail to understand – and it is what makes me characterize libertarianism as utopian and naive – is that essentially *all* political action is social engineering.

Neither conservatives nor the extreme right – neither of which is naive – make that mistake, even if, for polemical reasons, they reframe what they’re up to as not social engineering. The argument between liberals, conservatives, and the extreme right revolves around what kind of social engineering is best. Tax breaks for corporations? Affirmative action? Coathangers? A strong FEMA? But the reality of government as social engineer is accepted as a given.

Libertarians were sold a bill of goods by Republicans. As all, repeat all, recent Republican history has shown, they are as much the party of Big Government as the Democrats. Before going blue, however, libertarians will need seriously to refine their notion of what government is. Make no mistake: Democrats do not loathe government. They recognize that there are some functions a government must do. And they are honest – unlike their red counterparts – about their belief that there are some things governments should do. Furthermore, Democrats are once again honest in asserting that there are some things governments do far better than private corporations or charities. (And it goes without saying there are many things the government should keep its filthy hands out of.)

The argument, within the party, is over the details and the relative balance. But the Norquistian notion of shrinking the US government so that it is so small it will slip down the drain (or whatever his odious metaphor was) is recognized as sheer idiocy or propaganda. The US government will change. It will not get substantially smaller. You can, God forbid, get rid of the NEA, but that just means that there will be more money going to fund bridges to nowhere in Alaska.

As long as Mona clings to the illusion that any human society can exist with “minimal” or no social engineering from the top, she will find politics among the blues majorly annoying.

Turning it around, from the standpoint of this liberal, “existential” arguments about social programs are a complete waste of time. Social Security is a good thing, Mona. Like any human institution, of course it can be improved and every liberal welcomes substantive discussions on how to do that. But eliminated? Privatized? That’s just social engineering John Birch-style. It’s not smaller government but, in the present day, a movement towards a rapacious authoritarianism. This liberal wants to…move on from such rightwing timewasters and address real issues, such as the construction of an affordable and just national healthcare system. There are serious, honest disagreements on how to do this. But I, for one, have zero interest in arguing whether it is creeping communism or not. I’ve seen communism up close; the charge that liberals advocating universal healthcare are a bunch of pseudo-commies is an outrageous canard that does not merit serious argument.

All of the above implies that federal taxes will have to be restored to rational levels to fund the workings of the US government. The fiscal irresponsibility exhibited by the rightwing whenever they obtain power is unconscionable. That plus the moral irresponsibility of deliberately shifting the tax burden to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor is criminal (maybe not legally, but certainly spiritually, by any serious standard including Christian and atheist value systems). Taxes will rise once the rightwing loses power. If paying your debts is a virtue, and it is, that is a Very Very Good Thing.

Potentially more troubling for the libertarian interested in the Democratic Party is Mona’s advocacy of federalism. I say “potentially” because I don’t know enough about what Mona herself means by the term. From what I can tell in a quick search, federalism is just States Rights rewritten as a polysyllable. And that is troubling.

Today, less than 40 years after the assasination of King, racism is still a shameful, omnipresent reality in the US (that it is true all over the world does not make it less shameful in the US, which has a terrible history of racism that adds a particular context). Liberals have a lot of problems with Katrina, for example; we believe the avoidable components of the disaster were permitted to happen due in large part to racism coupled with endemic corruption and incompetence. True, the Democratic Party does not, qua party, officially share this conviction, and Mona may find many Democrats who think racism had nothing to do with the awful images of human bodies floating in sewage. But it is hard to imagine that advocates of “federalism” will find many brothers and sisters in the party.

The issues centered around federalism are ancient ones in American history, as Sean Wilentz reminds us, in considerable detail, in his not-to-be-missed The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. Suffice it to say that arguments for “federalism” that depend upon chimera like “original intent” are, when you examine the history closely, exceedingly crude to the point of useless, except to advance partisan contemporary objectives. Original intent, as any fan of early music knows, is simply impossible to recover. It can be approximated to a greater or lesser extent, but there are always significant differences that make no performance “authentic.” Similarly attempts to base a modern political philosophy on slavish adherence to original intent are doomed to failure; such attempts represent a kind of secular fundamentalism, cherry-picking desired characteristics from a wide and contradictory canon of texts.

It goes without saying that there are useful arguments to be had about the intent of the Founders, the following generations, and their relevance today. It is the framing within the Procrustean bed of “original intent” that foreordains a conclusion that can only be illiberal. An argumentative structure that, as one of its givens, eliminates liberalism is not a structure I care to privilege with “engagement.” Ever.*

So in sum, Mona, you may find parts of the Democratic Party worldview congenial. But you will also find much that you won’t like; even if the Democrats, God forbid, move farther away from Enlightenment values, ie liberalism, broadly defined, it is hard to imagine the party advocating anything remotely close to libertarianism. From my standpoint, if the Democrats did so move, my despair about the future of democracy in this country would deepen, hard as that is to believe for some of you.

On the other hand, if you can, as you have in the past, continue to query your own belief system, I am confident that you will come to the conclusion that liberalism is far more congenial to your worldview than you currently think. You may be remain seriously bugged by my particular brand of liberalism, but those kinds of disagreements are part and parcel of the liberal tradition. No genuine liberal ever wants lockstep agreement. That’s for Republicans.

There is, however, a disagreement in kind between arguments within liberalism and those intended to destroy it. There are very few of those that stand on their own merit, without positing a dependence upon an unseen Authority or an innate permanent inequality between people that deserves to be codified into law. Liberals emphatically reject arguments that categorically depend upon such assumptions; it is there our tolerance meets its limit. And a Democratic Party that moves further to embrace such assumptions would be a terrible party, indeed.

*Many dishonest critics of liberals assume that our interest in understanding what Islamism is about represents a desire to “engage’ radical Islamists in an argument over values during a shared meal of hummus, red wine, and brie. They know very well that is a lie. Unfortunately, many other people, who understand nothing about liberal values of inquiry and knowledge, believe the lie.