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It is only the novice in political economy who thinks it the duty of government to make its citizens happy. Government has no such office. To protect the weak and the minority from the impositions of the strong and the majority–to prevent any one from positively working to render the people unhappy, to do the labor not of an officious inter-meddler in the affairs of men, but of a prudent watchman who prevents outrage–these are rather the proper duties of a government. — Walt Whitman

From Godspy:

I’ve never been so close in my life to not voting in the presidential election at all—surely a cop-out and a sin for a conscientious citizen of any persuasion, religious or political. So, beyond sending a few bucks to Democrats for Life, I’m back to participating, it would appear, in that other quadrennial exercise in masochism, the one known as “the lesser-of-two-evils vote.” What’ll it be this year, Deb, choose your poison: Big Government Post-Modernism or Big Government Corporatism? Since both parties have gone a-whoring with the empire builders of every utopian persuasion, which gross national product should Empire America market to the unsuspecting world in the next four years? Madonna or Wal-Mart? Chemical abortifacients or chemical pesticides? Planned Parenthood or Planned Obsolescence?

If conservatives and libertarians disagree about ends, but agree (sometimes) about means, the reverse might be said of libertarians and liberals. To see why, consider that libertarians often trace their intellectual lineage to J.S. Mill’s “On Liberty.”

For Mill, our proper ends are not given by religion or traditional morality. Rather, the proper end of each person is the cultivation and development of his own unique character and individuality:

“As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them. It is desirable, in short, that in things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself. Where, not the person’s own character, but the traditions of customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.”



If the goal of social progress is the cultivation of individuality, then the means are primarily leaving each person to his own devices, as Mill enunciates in his famous “harm principle” (as it has come to be called):

“…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

The sovereignty of the individual over himself is very much a bedrock principle of libertarian thought. But what does this have to do with liberalism?

Contrary to what conservatives sometimes say, the driving idea behind American liberalism has usually not been “equality of condition” or egalitarianism, per se. Rather, liberals have seen themselves as continuing the Millian project of liberating the individual. This is the basic goal modern-day liberals have in common with so-called classical liberals (i.e. libertarians).

Modern liberals differ from their libertarian cousins in giving the State a more positive role in facilitating the development of the individual. In Mill’s day, the State could plausibly be seen as the chief obstacle to individual flourishing, but later liberals have argued that concentrations of economic power, as well as oppressive social structures like racism and sexism are just as big of a problem. Liberals think that the State needs to do more in securing “positive liberty” – e.g. supplying basic economic goods which are prerequisites for any meaningful life. They see themselves as being truer to the spirit of Millian liberalism, while libertarians are more like fundamentalists who insist on sticking to the letter.

Arguably, though, libertarians and liberals have more in common with each other than either do with conservatives. Liberals and libertarians agree that the highest political end is liberation from arbitrary authority and power, and agreement about ends is presumably more important than agreement about means (since the means are employed for the sake of the ends).

Of course, libertarians and liberals will sometimes disagree on what counts as arbitrary and oppressive authority. The liberal may want to use the State to limit the influence of religion on society, whereas the libertarian may regard religion as much less of a threat to liberty because of its essentially voluntary nature. Still, one would expect to see libertarians and liberals aligned on a variety of issues in opposition to the more traditionalist brand of social conservative, Indeed, this seems to be what’s happening, for example, on issues like euthanasia, abortion and biotechnology.

Touchstone Magazine has recently put up an extensive archive of its articles going back to 1999. One of the gems I came across is a piece by Christopher Killheffer: “Our Food from God.” Killheffer writes:

The industrial system of raising animals is not disordered because it kills chickens; it is disordered because it first, from the very start of their lives, deprives chickens of their chicken-ness. Creatures God created for open air, earth, and sky, it forces into crowded steel cages stacked several levels high inside factory buildings. It causes immense suffering through the distortion of their created natures, thereby achieving exactly the opposite of what Adam achieved in naming the animals.

Rather than seeking to cooperate with the Creator in recognizing the distinctness of his creatures and stewarding them according to their specific natures, it seeks to transform their natures into a single pattern determined entirely by industrial efficiency. The warning of the Church echoes now as a condemnation: “Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator.” The factory farm’s torment and distortion of animals is nothing less than contempt for the God who created them.

Today at Tech Central Station, Kenneth Silber tries to rekindle the romance between conservatism and libertarianism, which one could say has been on the rocks of late. Disagreements about everything from stem-cell research to the Iraq war threaten to put the final nail in the coffin of “fusionism” – the ideological glue (developed most notably by the late Frank Meyer) that held the conservative-libertarian alliance together throughout the Cold War (though there were notable defectors such as Murray Rothbard who broke with official conservatism over Vietnam, and the Cold War generally).

Silber believes that a kind of neo-fusionism can be forged centered around eschewing extremism, an outreach to right-leaning centrists and moderates who have accepted the necessity of limited government, and opposition to the growing authoritarianism (as Silber sees it) of the Left:

Does fusionism have a future? I believe it does. For one thing, the publication you are now reading has a distinctly fusionist coloration. Moreover, “libertarian conservative” (unlike “promiscuous celibate”) is in fact coherent. It describes someone who thinks libertarian institutions are worth conserving (and that a country embracing such institutions is worth defending). It implies a consistency in advocating both social and economic freedoms, and a recognition that both types of freedoms require responsibility and virtue.

On the face of it, fusionism seems like a neat way to resolve the disagreements between libertarians and conservatives. But is it really a coherent philosophical position?

The fundamental premise of fusionism is that virtue cannot be coerced. For an action to have moral worth, it must be freely chosen. Therefore, liberty should be the highest political goal, because maximizing liberty will expand the space for the exercise of virtue.

The problem with this is that, while it’s true that virtue can’t be coerced, it doesn’t follow that maximizing political liberty will have the result of maximizing the free exercise of virtue. And this is why fusionism can’t ultimately reconcile the differences between libertarians and conservatives.

Take pornography for example. All libertarians believe that pornography should be legal, while at least some conservatives would support restrictions on it. The libertarian believes that the State is justified in using the force of law to restrict only those behaviors that pose a threat to life, liberty and property. So long as all the parties involved are consenting adults, the libertarian (qua libertarian) sees no problem with pornography. For the libertarian, liberty is the chief end of politics.

The conservative, on the other hand, thinks that the chief end of politics is not liberty, but virtue. And sometimes the cultivation of virtue will be served by robust governmental action. Does this mean that the conservative thinks that virtue can be coerced? Not necessarily. What the conservative does think is not that the State can make people virtuous, but that it can make it easier for people to be virtuous. For instance, the widespread availability of pornography may provide a temptation for many people to lapse into vice, so the conservative will not necessarily oppose the State’s removing this “occasion for sin.” Now, whether or not such a move would be a good idea all things considered is a matter of prudential judgment (e.g. will this create a massive black market in pornography, undermine respect for the law, etc.). But the conservative has no objection in principle to restricting people’s choices for the sake of facilitating virtue.

While libertarians and conservatives will continue to find much to agree on (e.g. opposition to taxes), there’s probably no easy way to resolve the very real philosophical differences between them. As long as conservatives and libertarians have such different ideas about the ends of politics, there will be occasions for sharp disagreement about means. I suspect neo-fusionism is apt to prove as unstable as its predecessor.

I know my day’s not complete without a dose of good and crunchy analytic philosophy of religion. The Maverick Philosopher is happy to oblige.

Nothing is more sure, than that as “the Lord is loving to every man,” so “his mercy is over all his works;” all that have sense, all that are capable of pleasure or pain, of happiness or misery. In consequence of this, “He openeth his hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness. He prepareth food for cattle,” as well as “herbs for the children of men.” He provideth for the fowls of the air, “feeding the young ravens when they cry unto him.” “He sendeth the springs into the rivers, that run among the hills, to give drink to every beast of the field,” and that even “the wild asses may quench their thirst.” And, suitably to this, he directs us to be tender of even the meaner creatures; to show mercy to these also. — John Wesley

Ramesh Ponuru has a piece at Tech Central Station debunking some misleading poll numbers on stem-cell research.

“Who’s Afraid of Noam Chomsky?” A fair and balanced take on the self-styled American dissident from a “right-libertarian” perspective.

Look out! It’s the “Antiwar, Anti-abortion, Pro-Jesus Party”!

John Harris offers us a vitriolic attack on religion in the LA Times today. His criticism seems to consist of two distinct components:

a) Religious beliefs are false and/or irrational, and shouldn’t be treated as beyond rational criticism

b) Religious beliefs lead people to engage in morally objectionable forms of political action(e.g. suicide bombing, opposing embryonic stem cell research)

Concerning (a), obviously I think that some religious beliefs are true (e.g. that God exists) and that one can rationally affirm some religious beliefs. I do, however, agree that religious beliefs are not, and should not be, exempt from rational criticism.

However, Harris has done nothing (at least in this piece) to show that religious beliefs are false or irrational except by claiming that they lead to morally objectionable actions, which leads us to claim (b).

Harris claims, for example, that some religious people believe, on religious grounds, that destroying human embryos for research purposes is wrong:

Consider the subject of stem-cell research. Many religious people, drawing from what they’ve heard from the pulpit, believe that 3-day-old embryos — which are microscopic collections of 150 cells the size of a pinhead — are fully endowed with human souls and, therefore, must be protected as people. But if we know anything at all about the neurology of sensory perception, we know that there is no reason to believe that embryos at this stage of development have the capacity to sense pain, to suffer or to experience death in any way at all. (There are, for comparison’s sake, 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly.)

For starters, I’ve never seen a convincing argument for why size is a morally relevant category. Is it less wrong to kill a very short man than a very tall one?

Also, note the straw man Harris has constructed to represent the opponents of stem-cell research. Those who oppose the destruction of embryos do not do so because they think the embryos can feel pain. Surely Harris knows this, all his hand-waving about “the neurology of sensory perception” notwithstanding.

Harris seems to assume that we (i.e. we sophisticated cosmopolitan readers of the LA Times) will take it as self-evident that it’s okay to destroy 3-day-old embryos for research purposes. But if you don’t take this as self-evident, then the fact that some religious people oppose it really has no bearing on the issue. Moreover, there are plenty of atheists and agnostics who believe that life begins at conception too. All this does nothing to show that religious belief qua religious belief lead to dangerous consequences. Though it may show that religious beliefs sometimes lead to conclusions that John Harris, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, finds unacceptable.

Likewise Harris’ treatment of suicide bombers:

Anyone who thinks that terrestrial concerns are the principal source of Muslim violence must explain why there are no Palestinian Christian suicide bombers. They too suffer the daily indignity of the Israeli occupation. Where, for that matter, are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal. Where are the throngs of Tibetans ready to perpetrate suicidal atrocities against the Chinese? They do not exist. What is the difference that makes the difference? The difference lies in the specific tenets of Islam versus those of Buddhism and Christianity.

Leaving aside whether he’s accurate in his exegesis of the tenets of Islam, this actually seems to undercut Harris’ main point – that religion per se is somehow uniquely responsible for evil. Some religious beliefs encourage morally objectionable actions, just as some non-religious beliefs do. For instance, the brutal occupation the Tibetans have been suffering under is the result of a secular (indeed, explicitly atheistic) government’s belief that it has a right to their homeland. People can be motivated to do unspeakable acts for non-religious reasons as well as religious ones. And specifically religious (and non-religious) beliefs can motivate acts of supreme heroism, justice and compassion.

Whether, in the grand scheme of things, more evil has had religious or non-religious roots is probably unknowable (though the history of communism alone gives religion a run for its money). What is certain is that moral actions and the beliefs that inform them are proper subjects for critical scrutiny, whether those beliefs are religious or not. But this has to be judged on a case-by-case basis; sweeping generalizations like Harris’ only serve to undermine critical thought.

[C]owardice involves not only fear of danger to one’s life, but danger to one’s life objectives. The terrorist – disregarding all moral rules protecting innocents and exploiting the trust of others so his project cannot be defeated – is a coward. Cowardice implicates not just how one views one’s own life, but those of others. — Carlin Romano