Getting More Freedom Where You Can

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With the usual caveat that small-L libertarian is at best only an approximate description of my political philosophy, let me commend you to a very interesting post at Bryan Caplan's Substack, "DeAngelis Generalized."

Within, Caplan analyzes how education reform advocate Corey DeAngelis has helped move the needle towards such reforms as school choice at the state level across America -- and suggests generalizing the strategy to achieve other expansions of freedom.

And what strategy is that? Caplan puts it as follows:

Image by Jeffrey Hamilton, via Unsplash, license.

In The Parent Revolution, Corey DeAngelis argues that the key variable was a change in strategy. Stop trying to persuade your enemies. Instead, redouble your efforts on your friends.

...

In Red States:

• Push pro-freedom policies with conservative appeal using conservative rhetoric.
• Stop pushing pro-freedom policies with primarily progressive appeal.

In Blue States:

• Push pro-freedom policies with progressive appeal using progressive rhetoric.
• Stop pushing pro-freedom policies with primarily conservative appeal.

I know "stop pushing pro-freedom policies" never sounds good to libertarians. But the logic is sound. Resources are finite. Energy is finite. Friendship is finite. So use your resources, energy, and friendship in whatever way gets you the freest bang for your buck. [links omitted]

This DeAngelis did in response to the fact that, for example, in red states, appeals to Democrats weren't getting GOP holdouts to budge, while also failing to persuade Democrats to go against a major constituency (e.g., teachers unions).

The good of this is that it is a brilliant application of reframing to a political strategy Ayn Rand once recommended in her 1972 essay, "What Can One Do?"

The only groups one may properly join today are ad hoc committees, i.e., groups organized to achieve a single, specific, clearly defined goal, on which men of differing views can agree. In such cases, no one may attempt to ascribe his views to the entire membership, or to use the group to serve some hidden ideological purpose (and this has to be watched very, very vigilantly).

The groups seeking such measures as school choice may well often fit into such criteria.

Interestingly, Rand warned, in the previous paragraph of the same essay against the possible bad:

... Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to "do something." By "ideological" (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the "libertarian" hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies. (For a discussion of the reasons, see "The Anatomy of Compromise" in my book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.)

In the context of Caplan's post, what does all of this mean for an advocate of liberty? Be sure you judge a given measure to be pro-freedom and why, and if the opportunity presents itself, advocate a better version of it or help others see how it might fit into a larger pro-freedom picture.

Rand did this in her 1972 essay, "Tax Credits for Education":

I want to stress that I am not an advocate of public (i.e., government-operated) schools, that I am not an advocate of the income tax, and that I am not an advocate of the government's "right" to expropriate a citizen's money or to control his spending through tax incentives. None of these phenomena would exist in a free economy. But we are living in a disastrously mixed economy, which cannot be freed overnight. And in today's context, the above proposal would be a step in the right direction, a measure to avert an immediate catastrophe.

In addition, she explained at length in other work why she repudiated the Libertarian Party.

The strategy Caplan outlines is brilliant, but comes with the hazard of being wasted by "pro-liberty" elements that are less than fastidious in their thinking and propose policies that might seem pro-liberty, but not be, or that are not timely. (Some drug "legalization" attempts come to mind as an example of the latter: If addicts don't get punished for real crimes (such as trespassing) or pay for their own medical expenses, such an "experiment in freedom" will backfire and lend surface credibility to the idea that drugs should be prohibited.)

That said, today's left-right tribalism is a significant impediment to loosening the grip of the leviathan welfare state. This approach looks like it could alleviate the problem by leveraging the prejudices of each side to buy more time (in the form of slightly more freedom) for the cultural change that will need to occur before the politics can fundamentally improve.

-- CAV