Keith Preston notified the members of his mailing list of this attack on Matt Welch and his Ron Paul column by Justin Raimondo at Taki’s Top Drawer. I wrote up a response, but Taki has a very restricted comment system, so I’ll have to put the post here and then link to it.
Both Welch and Raimondo aquit themselves poorly. Nowhere did Welch actually demonstrate that “whipping up white resentment” was unpopular, and any political analyst worth their salt knows that cosmopolitan libertarianism (correct on its merits or not) is a very minority opinion. The people at the Monkey Cage were right to mock the Reason crowd for their active fantasy lives. LeftConservative already wrote a good take on the Duke issue [he responds to this Raimondo post here].
Raimondo takes the typical mistaken oppositional view of the LR crowd that believes people are even aware enough of paleos to have it in for them. Reason was not “out to get Paul”; any centrist or leftist would have thought they were huge Paul boosters. It is the same mistaken view that led Raimondo to believe that Reason was going to fire Doherty for being pro-Paul. Welch explicitly denies that there is any evidence Paul was a racist in his article. Welch’s criticism regarding MLK isn’t simply voting against the holiday, but embracing J. Edgar Hoover’s take on him as a menace when Paul later called him a hero (it seems implied that Paul didn’t make the first statement). I can’t think of any excuse for Rockwell’s statement about recording the police, but I think there are legitimate reasons to work with members of the Communist Party, if not for communism.
Raimondo tries to paint Welch as dishonestly covering up his past, but he admits at here that before he “begged for U.S. leadership in a feckless world to stop the slaughter in Sarajevo” but after the Iraq war has shifted gears. I also wonder if Raimondo spoke similarly about Vaclav Havel in the past.
Entitled to an Opinion 
April 3, 2008 at 3:25 am
TGGP,
I haven’t noticed that “Taki has a very restricted comment system”: I’ve repeatedly had long comments posted there with no problems at all.
The central problem with Matt Welch is that he is not, by any reasonable meaning of the term, a libertarian.
In Welch’s own words,
“I’m a liberal. I take liberalism to mean a belief in policy geared toward easing poverty, extending rights to every walking human who hasn’t utterly forfeited them, getting the government out of the morality business, regulating markets judiciously, ensuring the pervasive yet hopefully efficient delivery of non-market goods such as education, health care…”
Someone who views education and health care as “non-market goods” is simply a Hillary-Clinton liberal, which he seems to recognize himself.
That this guy runs a magazine that some people insist on falsely labeling as “libertarian” is absolutely hilarious.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
April 3, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I’m from Sacramento. Hi Dave.
Here’s my post from Preston’s forum on this topic:
It seems to me that Reason, while trendily tilting toward excusing – or at least seeking to understand – radical black politics, but not radical white politics, has essentially the kind of “respectable” establishment attitude that race based populism and brash, in-your-face proclamations about US policy and history is a no-no. In a search for “Wright” in the Reason search engine, I find articles more or less reprimanding him and instead supporting Obama’s idea of harmony, change and progress – in the abstract of course. (The Hit & Run stuff is a little more mixed, but blog posts on such a popular forum are mere flights of fancy in comparision to the official stuff.)
Yea, Yea, Welch may have changed his mind, but Raimondo’s point that these are far more palatable “libertarians” to the establishment set is spot on. After all, there are countless libertarians who are stalwart anti-war types, and not “liberals” as described by Welch, that could qualify for editor-in-chief of Reason. You read the part about the Drug War vs Iraq War as “debatable”, with the latter being so but the former, never? That is quite telling, and Raimondo is on to something with his exposure of the neocon foundations funding Reason, which probably has alot to do with the above.
I’ve been looking into the DC libertarian crowd. Organizations like America’s Future Foundation are much more neocon in in orientation that I’d realized at first. (IHS and AFF came to Berkeley recently for a shindig, and I went because I’m an IHS alum, having attended a couple of their seminars.) Go to the AFF link, and it’s very much about what Formerpolicywonk is talking about, with links to other mainstream outlets like Samizdata and Bureaucrash, folks like Andrew Sullivan, etc. Many an article calling for intervention in Darfur and mostly anti-anti-war stuff, if not outright support (though that is there too!). Basically what is known as SOUTH PARK REPUBLICAN. Even their fairly good economic talk is sprinkled with more bashing of globalization protesters than criticism of the WTO. Ass backward in my opinion, and I’m more free market than they!
Will Wilkinson calls this the “narcissism of small differences”, but the accumulation of these “small” differences – apart from the large difference of consistent non-interventionism vs. case-by-case interventionism, which is HUGE – amounts to something important. After all, the rhetoric of the anarchist and the Marxist circa 1900 were quite similar to outside observers, but wow, what a difference…
-Dain
April 3, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I haven’t noticed that “Taki has a very restricted comment system”: I’ve repeatedly had long comments posted there with no problems at all.
It says explicitly to make short posts and I’ve had posts blocked before.
Someone who views education and health care as “non-market goods” is simply a Hillary-Clinton liberal, which he seems to recognize himself.
As far as I know, Welch has never pushed such views in Reason Magazine itself. Maybe he still thinks that, but it hasn’t intruded into the publication yet.
Yea, Welch may have changed his mind, but Raimondo’s point that these are far more palatable “libertarians” to the establishment set is spot on
True, but not an indictment.
You read the part about the Drug War vs Iraq War as “debatable”, with the latter being so but the former, never?
Roderick Long and Walter Block have been arguing just that here.
That is quite telling, and Raimondo is on to something with his exposure of the neocon foundations funding Reason
Who is funding Reason?
I’m not too familiar with AFF (I think it’s conservative/libertarian fusionist), mostly with Gene Healy who seems to be good on most stuff. I’d like to read his book on the Imperial Executive and I found a lot to like in his piece on the dangers of libertarian centralism. Bureaucrash just seem humorous but I don’t know if they’ve committed any libertarian heresies. Sullivan used to be just absolutely awful, but he’s changed his mind and come out against the Iraq War and Bush’s abuse of powers, and even seemed to endorse Ron Paul for a while.
After all, the rhetoric of the anarchist and the Marxist circa 1900 were quite similar to outside observers, but wow, what a difference
When the anarchists actually got in power, like in some of Spain for a while, how different were things?
April 3, 2008 at 3:32 pm
TGGP,
You wrote:
>> [Dave] Someone who views education and health care as “non-market goods” is simply a Hillary-Clinton liberal, which he seems to recognize himself.
>[TGGP] As far as I know, Welch has never pushed such views in Reason Magazine itself. Maybe he still thinks that, but it hasn’t intruded into the publication yet.
Perhaps, but an editor has to make “gut-level” decisions about what topics to cover, who to publish, etc. There’s no way that an editor can avoid his own personal views affecting the outcome of such inherently subjective decisions.
Which is one reason why Jewish mags do not usually hire neo-Nazis as editors, anti-Semitic rags tend not to have Jewish editors, etc., no matter how brilliant such people might be in their editing skills.
And, in any case, I think any reasonable person can agree that Matt Welch is not an exemplar of journalistic brilliance!
If National Review hired Noam Chomsky as editor or if The Nation hired Rush Limbaugh as editor, everyone would, for obvious reasons, be sorely perplexed. For some reason, some libertarians are not equally perplexed that the “libertarian” magazine reason hired a “Hillary liberal” as editor.
And that lack of libertarian outrage rather perplexes me.
Personally, I think it results from the extraordinary emotional insecurity that I have observed among so many “mainstream” libertarians. An awful lot of libertarians whom I have known personally seem to be rather ashamed of being libertarians and almost obsequious towards the mainstream political/cultural/media establishment. You know, it’s okay to suggest modest social security privatization, but to actually point out that the US government is the largest existing threat to world peace might make someone upset. And these “libertarians” don’t want anyone to dislike them! You see this again and again – so many libertarians’ fear of telling the truth about Lincoln, MLK, etc.
Neither the neocons nor the traditional Left seem to suffer from this overwrought fear that forthrightly declaring their positions might result in personal disapproval.
If I may put it in colloquial terms, too many libertarians seem to be little weenies who are afraid of their own shadows!
If this were not the case, I cannot see why libertarians would not express as much outrage at a Clintonian liberal editing a “libertarian” mag as leftists would express if Limbaugh were appointed editor of The Nation or as conservatives would express if Noam Chomsky became the editor of National, Review.
Dave
April 3, 2008 at 3:52 pm
TGGP wrote:
>> [Dain] After all, the rhetoric of the anarchist and the Marxist circa 1900 were quite similar to outside observers, but wow, what a difference
> [TGGP] When the anarchists actually got in power, like in some of Spain for a while, how different were things?
My understanding (I think Orwell wrote about this) is that in Spain the Communists were actually the middle-class moderates and the anarchists played the role of the bloody-minded Bolsheviks!
But, of course, we need to remember that “anarchist” is a term a bit like “extremist” – commonly used as a smear term, and, at best, covering people whose views diverge wildly from each other.
Did you see the recent essay posted on the Rockwell site ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard167.html ) in which Rothbard suggested that, for these reasons, maybe those of us who are “libertarian anarchists” should not be termed “anarchists” based on the historical understanding of the term?
As the Bard said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” And, I’m not hung up on terms here. But I do find that sometimes people understand me better if I describe myself as a “non-believer in government” rather than an “anarchist.” After all, I do not in fact believe in some complicated utopian doctrine known as “anarchism”: I just do not believe in government.
A similar point occurs in religion: I’m an atheist, but if I declare this I am commonly asked why I believe in atheism! Of course, I do not believe in atheism – I simply fail to believe in Christianity, Islam, Wicca, Hinduism, deism, etc. So, I commonly find it improves communication to describe myself as a “non-believer in any religion.” Then, the obvious questions – e.g., why don’t you believe in any religion? — actually make sense.
Dave
April 3, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Dain,
Hi. Are you still in the Sacramento area?
I knew IHS way back when I was doing my grad work at Stanford around 1980 and IHS was only a few miles down the road from Stanford. At the time, they were solidly, unabashedly libertarian (and very small). The dominant figure was Leonard Liggio, whose knowledge of history was awe-inspiring. Some of us grad students at Stanford would get together with Leonard, bring up some obscure topic in history, and off Leonard would go, sort of verbally creating a monograph on the subject on the fly. Amazing. (I also knew Cato when it was based in the Bay Area and was unabashedly Rothbardian. Times have changed. In my experience, reason was always a bit ashamed of being unreservedly libertarian, however.)
I’ve heard rumors that IHS has been “captured” by the faux libertarians (Beltwaytarians, or whatever term you like), but I have not seen any real evidence on this. What was your experience on this?
Dave
April 3, 2008 at 6:05 pm
TGGP,
As for Reason mag, John M. Olin foundation is the main neocon organ, and Earhart also helped the American Enterprise Institute get off the ground:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation
But I talk alot of shit. I have a subscription…although IHS bought it for me :)
On the drug vs. Iraq war, I suppose it’s the imbalance of debate on these respective wars that raises eyebrows. As Raimondo noted, nary a dissent on the drug war issue in the pages of Reason, but Iraq, a real tug of war. It’s also my own personal prejudice, as I’m with Block, Gregory and (most) of the libertarian grassroots blogosphere in believing imperial wars to be prioritized over abortion and immigration as they currently stand.
Dave,
In my experience IHS has been more concerned with introducing “regular kids” to libertarianism through a focus on single issues: gay marriage, the drug war, eminent domain. Not alot of emphasis on history at all, and for theory it’s mostly Hayek. Their favored economist? Try Milton Friedman. And for the love of god Thomas Sowell appears in the pantheon of names to be learned in their magazine adverts.
Does that answer your question?
I will say however that IHS serves a real need to introduce folks to libertarianism. In that regard it’s superior to Mises U. insofar as Mises is for the already initiated and appears to me unwilling or unable to appeal to a broader cross section of young Americans.(I’ve been to Mises U too.)
But if IHS is so hip to appealing to young people’s current preoccupations, you’d think they could devote some of their lectures to the current debacle in Iraq and the problem of aggressive foreign policy and interventionism in general. Even assuming that the legitimacy of the Iraq war is contestable, to not even bring it up or use it as a springboard for a discussion of “unintended consequences” in American foreign policy is strange. Though I recall they harp on foreign aid, but in that they share neocon talking points.
Apart from the above, I’d criticize the mainstream libertarian outreach organizations for not even considering, ala the left libertarians, the worth (or lack thereof) of intellectual property, mutualism, etc. And here, especially, would they find the default status of young people to be open to droppin’ some knowledge.
April 3, 2008 at 6:07 pm
And oh yea, Dave, I live in the bay area now. I never got used to Sac’s horrible summertime heat.
April 3, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Um, I left a post before post #7 but it hasn’t appeared. I even went back and tried to repost but it said “duplicate post detected”. So I assume it will pop up eventually?
I spent a while writing it…
April 3, 2008 at 6:13 pm
For some reason your comment was flagged as spam (as was one in a different thread by Hopefully Anonymous), so I went to the spam-list and despammed them.
April 3, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Though you likely know Sowell as a Republican hack, I’ll always have a soft spot for him since he probably more than anyone else introduced me to libertarianism. I’ll also say that Milton Friedman was more successful in achieving liberty than all the Austrians put together.
April 3, 2008 at 6:27 pm
TGGP,
I too have a soft spot for Tom Sowell — I met him years ago at Stanford, and he seemed to be an extraordinarily nice guy.
But, still, his foreign policy views have long been absolutely horrendous.
Dave
April 3, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Sowell introduced me to economics (after Hazlitt), but nothing resembling libertarianism. And I think his being associated with libertarianism taints it.
As for Milton Friedman, I applaud his work abolishing the draft, but I believe that the long term contribution of radical (purist) thought in informing our actions is superior to visible and obvious actions that involve the stroke of a pen from on high.
It’s damned near impossible to show this empirically, I admit, which is why the philosophical anarchists are accused of “doing nothing”.
April 3, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Your link to Thomas Sowell just brought me to your main page.
April 3, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Dain,
Yeah, I’m afraid that does answer my question. Sad. Was Liggio not involved at all? To not make use of Leonard’s prodigious knowledge of history really is horrible.
You wrote:
>Apart from the above, I’d criticize the mainstream libertarian outreach organizations for not even considering, ala the left libertarians, the worth (or lack thereof) of intellectual property…
I assume that you are referring to the fact that almost no Americans under thirty (or most of us who are well over thirty) really seriously believe in intellectual property anymore?
You know, the Rockwellians (notably Stephan Kinsella) have pushed this point a great deal (Kinsella is an IP attorney, so he has an insider’s view of what a mess IP is). Do you think that’s not getting out to the broader public interested in libertarian ideas? Interesting point.
Perhaps you can elaborate a bit on that comment and also on what you were referring to by “mutualism” (I know the term, but I’m not quite sure what you mean by it).
And, if you think Sacramento’s summers are bad, you should try St. Louis where I grew up – 95 degrees and 95 % humidity! At least, Sacramento heat is dry. (I did live in the Bay Area for a number of years and of course really enjoyed it – if you ignore the congestion, housing prices, etc.)
Dave
April 3, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Sorry about the link, it should be fixed now.
It’s damned near impossible to show this empirically
Then I see no reason to believe it.
Apart from the above, I’d criticize the mainstream libertarian outreach organizations for not even considering, ala the left libertarians, the worth (or lack thereof) of intellectual property
Cato’s Tom Palmer seems to question it. Mencius Moldbug rejects it. I discussed it a bit here.
Mutualism is a kind of anarchism inspired by Proudhon, and it is what Kevin Carson promotes (though he is also an acolyte of Benjamin Tucker, who in turn was a follower of Proudhon). I link to his Mutualist Blog on my blogroll. He also has the site http://www.mutualist.org/
April 3, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Dain,
Have you had any contact with Friedman’s son, David – a very bright guy, who is, curiously, a Ph.D. physicist now working as a professor of economics?
I had an interesting exchange with Dave Friedman on his blog a couple months ago in which he admitted that he was very uncertain about publicly stating his own moral views, and in which I tried to convince him, to no avail, that he should “come out of the closet” in presenting those moral views. Reading between the lines, it is pretty clear that he really holds moral views not too far from traditional rationalist/natural-right views, but for some reason he has a deep aversion to stating these publicly.
I think the same thing was true of his father, and that’s rather a shame. Of course, both men may rightly have thought that they could do more good by focusing on “value-free” economics, but to rigidly avoid presenting their broader views seems to me unfortunate. After all, these are both extremely bright guys, and I for one would like to know their thoughts on such issues.
I also think Milton Friedman’s emphasis on “positive economics,” which tends to border on naïve empiricism, was a huge mistake. Of course, he did not actually do economics that way: oddly enough, Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard both did economics in pretty much the same way. Both did pure theory in an almost completely a priorist manner (as most economists do), and both were happy to look at empirical data when applying theory to the real world or when doing historical studies (as, of course, everyone should).
Dave
April 3, 2008 at 9:05 pm
“It’s damned near impossible to show this empirically.
Then I see no reason to believe it.”
Yea, that’s the crux of it isn’t it? We can see a correlation between the rhetoric of individual autonomy and de jure private property respecting governments, but we can’t PROVE causation can we? Even though we know the link is no mere accident.
April 3, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I thought you meant there was no empirical evidence for causation, rather than iron-clad proof. If you want to learn about finding causality, you might want to check out the work of Judea Pearl and E. T. Jaynes. Standard social science statistical techniques used on data over some time-period are also better than nothing.
April 3, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Dave,
No contact with David Friedman, but apparently he is teaching a Law and Econ course at SJSU (where I go) and I’m kicking myself for not having known about it.
I’m fairly attracted myself to the purely empirical/consequentialist approach to arguing for libertarianism. Although at heart I’m basically a Rothbardian (with a ‘new school’ attraction to Kevin Carson’s insights), I don’t want the more rigorous, empirically minded world to pass me up, and most people work with a consequentialist POV. So it’s important to keep up with the literature, as it were.
Jeffrey Friedman of Critical Review is THE guy for the purely empirical libertarian. He doesn’t so much argue for libertarianism as argue AGAINST all the alternatives, combining the insights of Lippman, Weber, Hayek and Popper to real world political economy. Good stuff.
The most powerful argument I’ve heard in recent times for the purely a priori, natural rights based approach is Hoppe’s Argumentation Ethics. Essentially if you’re chattin’ with me, you’ve already conceded the vital importance of property rights in your body and external objects. To argue against this is a performative contradiction.
April 4, 2008 at 1:45 am
Dain,
My interaction with Dave Friedman is only on the Web – I get the impression that he may not suffer fools kindly (although, fortunately, he seems not to think I’m a fool!). You might find it interesting to sit in on a few class sessions – I don’t know what the rules are at SJSU for dropping in on classes you’re not enrolled in.
No one really thinks consequentialist arguments are irrelevant – even the most “a prioristic” folks (Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, etc.) do after all routinely employ consequentialist arguments for obvious reasons – almost all human beings do care to some degree about consequences. One of the points Dave Friedman made in our discussion, and I think he’s quite right on this, is that the most important role for consequentialist arguments is to convince people that the approach you are advocating will not be truly catastrophic. After all, if implementing libertarian principles were to result in the immediate death of all human beings and the immediate extinction of the human race, very few of us indeed would be libertarians!
Even Rothbard was, in some ultimate sense, consequentialist: his argument for natural rights ended up appealing to the nature of human beings and what human nature requires for human survival and flourishing.
The real split is between those who think that each separate case and each separate issue should be judged on immediate consequentialist grounds and those who think that it is better to have broad principles that will stand in general and will not be altered to serve special interests in each special case. Mises himself was a rule utilitarian, but he and Rothbard commonly saw eye-to-eye because a broad concern for stable rules that allow humans to live in a predictable social environment, and a commitment to natural rights that enable humans to control their own lives, end up being pretty much the same thing.
Although I often find myself defending many of Hoppe’s positions, I’m a bit skeptical of his “argumentation ethics.” While there’s of course something to his point, I think he’s assuming that people must make an all-or-nothing choice, completely for natural rights or completely against them. You can’t assume that; you need to argue for it, and I don’t think he does so successfully.
Ultimately, I think that case can be made, but only by making various appeals to public-choice theory, to history, to human nature, etc., not by the purely a priori reasoning Hoppe employs.
Incidentally, I’m really claiming that, in this respect, ethics and political philosophy are like physics. One cannot, after all, make a purely a priori case for the theory of relativity or for the atomic theory. But, pull the evidence from a variety of observations and experiments together, and the case for both theories ends up being as strong as anyone could reasonably desire. I’d make the same claim for natural-right theory: take into account all that is known in economics, political science, history, evolutionary psychology, etc., and I think the case for natural rights is simply overwhelming to an honest person of good will and reasonable intelligence. However, if a person is not of good will, I don’t see how any a priori argument can force him to accept natural rights.
I also think natural rights is a pretty obvious consequence of common morality, if one is consistent: after all, ordinary people almost always respect the natural rights of their neighbors, relatives, etc. and are almost universally condemned if they don’t. The problem is that most people are inconsistent in not holding agents of government to the same rules as everyone else. In practical terms, I think this is the clearest way to argue for natural rights. But, philosophically speaking, that leaves the question of where common morality comes from and whether it is valid. Dealing with that philosophical point will take one in a direction in which rational consistency, consequentialism, and views of human nature all get mixed together. That is surely inevitable – after all, none of us thinks that natural rights, or morality in general, applies to ants, peonies, or bacteria! Somehow it has to be connected with our being the sort of entities which we humans actually, empirically are.
Dave
April 4, 2008 at 3:27 am
I share David Friedman’s view of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. I thought David was open about not being a utilitarian himself and merely using those arguments.
As a Stirnerite emotivist, I completely reject “natural rights” and “natural law”. I have written a preface to a new edition of L.A Rollins’ “The Myth of Natural Rights” which is coming soon from Nine Banded Books. Buy it (shortly)!
April 4, 2008 at 11:31 am
TGGP,
Great thread. I’ll stay out of it, except to mention that I finally received Lou’s new afterword to The Myth, and it’s really good. Really funny, actually, in a dead-pan sort of way. He’s still trying to locate a copy of a piece that he wrote on Michaal Shermer, and as soon as I receive that last morsel, the collection will be ready for final proofing; then it’s press time. In the next couple of months, the 9BB site will be revamped and relaunched as well. I shall keep you informed.
Best, -Chip
April 4, 2008 at 11:43 am
I wasn’t convinced at all by Friedman’s critique. Hoppe addressed Friedman’s point (in his recent book Economics and Ethics of Private Property and earlier articles no doubt); people can of course physically utter all kinds of nonsense – Hoppe wasn’t saying illogic results in physical dissolution or anything – it’s just that they are philosophically confused.
One of my best friends is a confused nihilist, not even able to acknowledge that he relies on property rights and bourgeois reciprocity to bring him his favorite food and avant garde German music. His refusal to believe this doesn’t create a rift in time and space, he’s just being silly.
April 4, 2008 at 11:46 am
Dave,
SJSU has no particular policy, or if they do it isn’t enforced. I should sit in.
I saw Friedman at Freedom Fest 04. Very sharp mind, moving a mile a minute.
April 4, 2008 at 3:02 pm
TGGP wrote:
>I thought David was open about not being a utilitarian himself and merely using those arguments.
Yes, I believe that is correct. And, I do not think David makes any pretense of even using classic full-blown utilitarian arguments – “the greatest good of the greatest number,” etc. His approach seems to be more along the lines of: “This is what is likely to happen factually; don’t you think that will really be pretty good?” If someone replies, “No, I hate the idea of peace, prosperity, etc.,” he will probably just shrug and move on to a more productive conversation.
And, as I mentioned above, he explained to me that his biggest concern is not to prove that a libertarian approach will result in an “optimal” result in some sense but merely that it will not result in catastrophe. That is a very weak form of utilitarianism, which nearly everyone agrees with.
Assuming I understand Dave correctly, all of this is quite unimpeachable. Indeed, Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, et al. often tried to do exactly the same thing. In fact, Mises and Rothbard were both very insistent that economics per se can and should be rigorously “wertfrei” (value-free) and that the approach followed by David is the right approach for an economist when acting solely in his professional role.
Nonetheless, David of course does have some views on morality, and I would like to hear what those views are and why he holds them.
Dave
P.S. Someday I’ll have to see if I can convince you that you really are a natural rightist after all – I actually think that a sufficiently thoughtful, intelligent person ends up being a natural rightists even if he dislikes the way natural rights are usually formulated. I think that self-interest and a natural modicum of sympathy for other human beings results in a commitment to natural rights (my point is not original, of course; Rand and many others have tried to argue the same point). I will concede that someone who is sufficiently sociopathic in his underlying emotions and motives could be intelligent and yet consistently reject natural rights (and all of ethics), but I think we can ignore that possibility in your case (and most humans’ cases).
April 4, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Dain wrote:
>… people can of course physically utter all kinds of nonsense – Hoppe wasn’t saying illogic results in physical dissolution or anything – it’s just that they are philosophically confused.
Yeah, I know. Where I think Hoppe fails is that someone could honestly, logically say “I make no claim at all to have the right to speak, breathe or anything else. Right now, I am able to get away with doing this, and I sort of hope that I shall continue to get away with it. But who knows? I have no rights – and neither do you!”
In a nutshell, someone really could refrain from speaking or thinking in terms of rights ideas at all. I see nothing illogical there.
Do any people actually do this? Very few, I think.
The idea of natural rights, and morality more generally, are natural, understandable emergent phenomena that have developed for evolutionary-psychological, game-theoretic/economic, etc. sorts of reasons. Almost all human societies and most human beings do indeed think in such terms, most especially when it is their own rights being violated!
So, yes, I agree with Hoppe that most humans who violate others’ natural rights are in fact being inconsistent, since most humans do, for understandable reasons, choose to think in moral terms.
But, logically, they don’t have to. If some human does rigorously eschew any sort of ethical thoughts or speech whatsoever, I do not see how his violating others’ rights can be logically inconsistent – although, of course, the rest of us might want to treat him as he treats all of us and “solve” the problem of his existence without any reference to ethical concerns ourselves!
Dave
April 4, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Congratulations on finding a topic that would draw a lot of flamers. What does Vaclav Havel have to do with anything?
P. Dave said The problem is that most people are inconsistent in not holding agents of government to the same rules as everyone else.
If they were held to the same rules, they wouldn’t be part of the government. The gov, by definition, enforces the rules that the rest of society lives by and by doing so necessarily is meta to those rules.
April 4, 2008 at 4:30 pm
“If they were held to the same rules, they wouldn’t be part of the government. The gov, by definition, enforces the rules that the rest of society lives by and by doing so necessarily is meta to those rules.”
Yep, it’s not fair but that’s the way it is. I don’t get to pull over a cop for speeding simply because he felt like it.
It’s pretty much assured that my kids will become philosophical anarchists, because to not be pissed about this asymmetry and master-slave relationship is to be no kid of mine!
April 4, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I had forgotten that it was Leland Yeager rather than David Friedman that gave the example of the slave arguing with his master. Friedman’s response is fine as well, especially his remark on how all societies that have existed are unlibertarian.
He’s still trying to locate a copy of a piece that he wrote on Michaal Shermer
Speaking of him, didn’t he support the Iraq war? Grr!
people can of course physically utter all kinds of nonsense
If rejecting Hoppe’s libertarianism is nonsense, that it something to be proved entirely outside Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. Hoppe has not demonstrated that they are being inconsistent.
as I mentioned above, he explained to me that his biggest concern is not to prove that a libertarian approach will result in an “optimal” result in some sense but merely that it will not result in catastrophe
Satisficing?
someone who is sufficiently sociopathic […] I think we can ignore that possibility in your case
Hold your horses!
What does Vaclav Havel have to do with anything?
Raimondo dismissed him as an American stooge.
enforces the rules that the rest of society lives by and by doing so necessarily is meta to those rules
Rules are not synonymous with laws. I agree that as the government is a distinct institution, it is not surprising that different rules might apply to it.
It’s pretty much assured that my kids will become philosophical anarchists, because to not be pissed about this asymmetry and master-slave relationship is to be no kid of mine
Political ideology has substantial heritability, but I think that’s mostly in conservative/liberal attitudes.
April 4, 2008 at 7:26 pm
“If rejecting Hoppe’s libertarianism is nonsense, that it something to be proved entirely outside Hoppe’s argumentation ethics. Hoppe has not demonstrated that they are being inconsistent.”
People who would say “No, I don’t own my own body” and “No, I don’t have the right to external objects first appropriated by me” are few and far between, at least among the vast majority of people you and I will ever meet.
Let’s see. If you don’t own your own body, who does? Of course some cultures may say “God”, but they are irrational. And if you don’t have rights to external objects first appropriated by you, then who does? What is the alternative? Waiting for permission from every concievable future appropriator, all of mankind…who? One could say “yes” to that question, but they will have undoubtedly violated their own argument.
Again, Hoppe would acknowledge that many cultures exist, and even thrive, with no understanding of this rather extreme Anglo-Saxon derived sense of individual autonomy (though partially inspired by Jurgen Habermas), but Hoppe is interested in positing a logical defense of libertarianism in the tradition of Western philosophy.
I’ve got Hoppe’s answer to Yeager at home, I can dig into it when I get back.
“Political ideology has substantial heritability, but I think that’s mostly in conservative/liberal attitudes.”
If I’d inherited a political orientation from my parents I’d be largely apolitical, but with a twinge of cranky Old Right sensibilities. So actually, I’d say the heritability theory holds with me too. That small but perceptible political orientation on my father’s part is definitely a part of my overall makeup.
My girlfriend is an LGBT supporting Social Democrat. Perhaps we’ll spawn the perfect Left Libertarian.
April 4, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Dunno, any head of state who appoints Frank Zappa as “Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism” is OK with me, or at least as OK as any head of state can hope to get.