It's Not Just Rand Paul

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

A member of the Libertarian Party makes the following criticism of the foundering Rand Paul campaign:

"Rand's slump in the polls just underscores questions about the efficacy of his whole campaign's strategy: what's the point of trying to inch a party in a more libertarian direction if, in the process, you're tarring the trending libertarian label by association with a diminished GOP brand and its unpopular and un-libertarian positions on social issues and immigration?" said John Vaught LaBeaume, a Libertarian campaign strategist who served as an adviser to Gov. Gary Johnson's 2012 presidential bid.
Except that LaBeaume fails to see that a similar argument could apply to the whole idea of the Libertarian Party, his criticism is apt.

On that score, Peter Schwartz argued a similar point at length long ago. As an example of why Libertarians can't make a coherent case for liberty, he quoted Murray Rothbard:
... Libertarianism is a coalition of adherents from all manner of philosophic (or nonphilosophic) positions, including emotivism, hedonism, Kantian a priorism, and many others. My own position grounds Libertarianism on a natural rights theory embedded in a wider system of Aristotelian-Lockean natural law and a realist ontology and metaphysics. But although those of us taking that position believe that only it provides a satisfactory groundwork as a basis for individual liberty, this is an argument within the libertarian camp about the proper basis and grounding of Libertarianism rather than about the doctrine itself. [emphasis in original]
How can there even be a "camp" with disagreement so fundamental that no two libertarians could even agree as to what liberty is? Having asked that, I now think I understand why LaBeaume fails to see himself in the mirror: It isn't just a matter of "branding" when neither the salesman nor his prospective customer really knows what is being "sold."

-- CAV

4 comments:

Kyle Haight said...

The rejection of the need for a foundation for liberty means there is no such thing as a 'libertarian argument for liberty'. There can be an Objectivist argument for liberty, an emotivist argument for liberty, a Christian argument, a utilitarian argument, a Kantian argument, etc, but not a *libertarian* argument.

A libertarian argument for liberty would have to draw only on premises common to all libertarians, and by their own statement the only premise necessarily held by all libertarians is that liberty is good. Any libertarian argument for liberty would thus reduce to begging the question -- liberty is good, therefore you should value liberty.

This has strategic implications for the libertarian movement. Because they have thrown away the ability to argue for liberty on hierarchically prior grounds, they are reduced to trying to argue for it on hierarchically posterior grounds. They find some concrete value held by their audience that is allegedly threatened by anti-liberty policies and argue "You value X; X depends on liberty; therefore you should value liberty".

This process leads to subjectivism because it accepts whatever concrete values their audience happens to hold, whether rational or irrational, life-sustaining or self-destructive. It leads to disintegration because it requires separate arguments for why each different concrete value under threat depends on liberty. (These arguments also tend to smuggle in hierarchically prior assumptions, because the dependency of specific values on liberty cannot be established without the use of abstract principles to which libertarianism qua libertarianism cannot appeal.)

Because the government is the greatest threat to liberty, the end result is a movement made up of people unified by the view that their values, whatever they might happen to be, are under threat by the government. This is why libertarianism winds up as anti-government, not pro-liberty.

Gus Van Horn said...

Kyle,

I mostly agree, except that a government that protected individual rights would pose no threat to liberty, and would be essential as a safeguard of individuals from harm by others and as a referee in disputes. That's quite a different thing than just letting everyone do whatever the hell they want, and THAT, I think is what motivates the anti-government animus. But the real threat that improper government poses to actual freedom is a good cover for the worst Libertarians, and a source of confusion for many others.

Gus

Kyle Haight said...

Perhaps I should have said "Because improper government is currently the greatest threat to liberty".

The people who are the most fertile ground for the libertarian appeal are specifically those who have some value X that is currently under threat or ban from the government. "Government preventing you from X-ing? We'll put a stop to that!" Libertarians don't care whether the government policies against X are actually justified or not, which is why they pick up support from both potheads and pedophiles.

I recall a quote, perhaps from Rothbard, cited by Schwartz in his "Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty" article, to the effect that libertarians should specifically hunt for converts on the fringes of society because those are the people who have been most harmed by the brutal, oppressive hand of government. If you set out to build a movement from people who have had their desires frustrated by government, attracting them by promising to stop the government from interfering in their pursuit of those desires, it isn't surprising that you'll wind up with a movement that views government per se as the enemy.

Gus Van Horn said...

Kyle,

Interesting: Whether a Libertarian is merely confused about this issue or intends to create an anti-government movement, that kind of recruiting will hasten progress in that direction.

Gus