So-cons and libertarians: the inalterable divide

I've been participating in this discussion over on The Shotgun.

At issue is the degree to which libertarianism and social conservatism are compatible. At this time, I have two answers: (a) in principle, they're not compatible; (b) in practice, they're probably not compatible, under the most plausible assumptions.

Now, to be clear, I think you can be a libertarian and agree with social conservatives about certain deeper matters of morality. For example, you can think potheads and other drug-users live terrible lives.

However, to take up such a position, your deeper moral view has to meet one of two conditions:

(a) When it comes to the state, the right has to trump the good. The state should never violate rights, even if that means sacrificing a lot of value.

Or:

(b) The good cannot be achieved without the right. That is, it's impossible to make the world a better place (with respect to values) by violating peoples' rights.

These conditions are explained as follows: suppose I think potheads tend to lead objectively poor lives. A libertarian has to agree that potheads should be allowed to smoke pot (assumption.) Now, if I think potheads live poor lives -- and, worse, encourage others to live poor lives -- I might think that the law ought to prohibit people from smoking pot. In fact, a lot of social conservatives do believe this.

In principle, to block the move from "X is a poor way to live" to "The state ought to prohibit people from living that way," you have to accept either (a) or (b.) Either you have to believe that a person's right to smoke pot trumps all, including whatever value would be achieved or protected through an anti-pot law. Or you have to believe that you can't actually promote value through the violation of rights.

It's true that there are many ways to get to libertarianism as a principle of political morality. But for your moral view to lead to that principle, it has to accept either (a) or (b.)

Kantians, Objectivists, some social liberals, Lockeans, etc. all accept one or the other. Social conservatives, on the whole, do not.

Yes, you can invent a straw social conservative who does accept one or the other. But then you've given up the contention that social conservatism is, in general, compatible with libertarianism.

My friend Peter Jaworski seems to agree with me, up to a point. He's argued that while social conservatives might not accept libertarianism in principle, they might endorse it in practice.

The so-con is involved in a dangerous liaison with the state. Empower it to take Emery's pot, and it'll be powerful enough to -- to take an example that would have been absurd just 10 years ago -- force churches to perform weddings that they morally object to, or force doctors to choose between either performing abortions or not being doctors at all.

As I understand it, the argument is that so-cons who accept drug prohibition are making a bad bet. They think that they can use the power of the state to achieve certain values. But they're risking the chance that other groups will use that power against them, to diminish those values.

In order to evaluate the argument, we have to know if the bet is really as bad as it is made out to be. And I don't think it is.

Call the option of forgoing the use of the state to achieve one's values "setting aside the hammer." A person sets aside the hammer when he decides not to use the law to force people to live the way he thinks is best. The claim is that, all things considered, it is rational for social conservatives to set aside the hammer, in order to avoid the risk that the hammer will be used against them.

I'll attack the claim from two directions. First, it is only rational to set aside the hammer if you can guarantee that opposing groups will also set down the hammer. This is true even if everyone would be better off if everyone agreed to set aside the hammer. But if I set down the hammer and my ideological opponent does not, I'm in an even worse position than when we were both groping for the hammer.

Second, it is only rational to set aside the hammer if there is really some risk that my ideological opponents will get the chance to use it against me. That is by no means something we can just assume. It is not the case that every interest group has an equal chance of taking possession of the hammer. Social conservatives happen to have a pretty good handle on it right now. Atheists who wish to ban churches (are there any of those?) do not.

The general problem with this argument is that it makes sense only at the point before the hammer is invented/distributed. If we were inventing society from scratch, we might all agree to set aside the hammer permanently. But once some group has control of the hammer, there is little reason for it to set the thing aside.

While some so-cons may come to see that they're making a bad bet, we shouldn't be surprised if most of them don't. And if we, as libertarians, tell them the bet is a bad one, with no redeeming features, then we're lying.

For the fact remains, it's not necessarily a bad bet. Why should powerful factions agree to give up their power?

Conservatism: Libertarian means, traditionalist ends?

According to Donald Devine, lecturer at the Federalist Leadership Institute seminar I attended a while back, that's the definition of American conservatism. The free market is the best but by no means the only way of achieving the ends tradition sets for us.


Why should tradition set our collective ends, or have any say at all over the goals we as a society choose to pursue? Why can't we just dream up an end -- say, the abolishment of poverty -- and then use the power of the state to achieve that end?

Conservatism's reliance on tradition represents a rejection of what Hayek called "constructivist social rationalism." Modern liberals believe -- in a way classical liberals did not -- that society cannot only articulate its own goals, but effectively pursue those goals through legislation. To rationalists of this stripe, the "city of God" is attainable here on earth, if only the right legislators with the right ideas are given the power to pass the right laws.

Although constructivism is now rampant, it is not a modern ideology. Arguably, Plato was its first and most vociferous exponent. According to the constructivist, the authority of the state can abolish poverty (or poetry, as Plato preferred) and bring about social harmony. It can achieve the ideal -- the right, the true, the good -- here and now.


How does the conservative's acceptance of tradition as a source of ends repudiate constructivism? After all, whether they admit it or not, many of the ideals liberals espouse are ends conservatives would affirm themselves, e.g. ending poverty, religious coexistence, and ensuring the benefits and burdens of living in a society are distributed fairly. What differentiates the conservative's acceptance of these ideas?


There is nothing new about the desire to live in a tolerant, prosperous society. This desire is not something liberals discovered on their own, to be gradually introduced to the rest of us uneducated troglidytes when we are ready for it.


Nor, however, are the goals of mutual toleration, justice, and freedom innately pursued. In our society, these are traditional goals. But societies like ours, that value these goals, are historically uncommon. There is nothing inevitable about the fact that you have come to value toleration, justice, and freedom. You value them precisely because you were lucky enough to be born into a society that valued them first.

While constructivism may accept traditionalist goals and ideas, it cannot accept them because they are traditional. It must accept them because they are rational. This means: because unencumbered, detached reason has formulated them, and given them its authoritative stamp of approval. However, as both Nietzsche and Hayek well knew, there is no such source of authority. The idea that we can reason best by abstracting away from our cultural surroundings, from our upbringing, from tradition itself -- this is a Platonic sham.

Epistemologically, the abstraction process -- deluding ourselves into thinking we have sanctified ourselves of any vestige of prejudice or cultural conditioning -- only leads to a distortion of our ideas. Morally and politically, it leads to policies that may work well in theory, but have disastrous results when applied to the "real world."

"Ecce homo," says Nietzsche's saint, painting himself on the wall. That is man, the way man ought to be. But not everyone can be a saint, and not only because for most attaining sainthood would require them to completely demolish their current identity. It would be a bad thing for all of us to suddenly ditch our current lives for the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Or the life of Jesus Christ, for that matter.

Some must stay behind, if only to grow the food for which the rest of us will beg. And if many of us did suddenly decide to make the switch to sainthood, those remaining behind -- standing athwart history, yelling "Stop!" like William Buckley -- could have no more accurate label than "conservative."

Fortunately, most of us will not whittle down our current identities and choose to start from scratch as saints. When it comes to the preservation and maintenance of our identities, we are all conservatives.
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The constructivist's repudiation of tradition leads to a distortion of conception. Policy-wise, the measures constructivists adopt to achieve their ends will suffer a similar theoretical bias. Imaginging themselves to be formulating their goals for the first time, they will ignore what has worked relatively well in the past in favor of social engineering more suited to the abstract, detached nature of their supremely rationalist ends.

Policy failure can easily be explained away -- "Well, at least we did something," will be the familiar refrain, just before another, newer policy is proposed. In repudiating the idea of traditionalist ends, the constructivist repudiates every traditional solution, and must always be on the hunt for the next social science "breakthrough" to supply the latest fix to age-old problems.