A Stitch in Haste

"[Moulitsas'] post/essay basically says: Look, 'new' Democrats and libertarians have a lot in common, except that you need government instead of the market to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this."
--ZenPolitics

And I thought a lengthy blogpost was required. Silly me.

Moulitsas' post is long and rambling and surprisingly incoherent. Mine won't be:

But there are other reasons why this outpost of libertarianism works. The government has put in an infrastructure to support the region including, among many other things, roads, the Internet, government research grants, and the most important ingredient of all: education, from the lowliest kindergarten to the highest post-doc program. Such spending, while requiring a government bureaucracy that makes a traditional libertarian shudder, actually provides the tools that individuals need to succeed in today’s world.

Moulitsas is speaking of Silicon Valley, that cauldron of entrepreneurial innovation that Moulitsas is relieved "survived" Microsoft (huh?).

Forgive me, but if the most-read liberal blogger in the world does not understand that a road is a public good and a government research grant is not, then liberalism is in a pretty sorry state. And while reasonable minds can disagree about whether elementary and secondary education is a public good (which in turn only suggests public financing, not public provision — does Moulitsas embrace vouchers?), there is absolutely no room for discussion about whether "post-doc programs" are a public good — they are not, any more than law school is.

And I'm not sure why Moulitsas thinks Silicon Valley is somehow different from the rest of the country. Doesn't Cambridge, Massachusetts, have roads, the Internet and post-doc programs? Is that also a shining city on a libertarian hill?

Stated differently, such a mish-mosh of "neat-o" government expenditures (neat-o to Moulitsas, that is) does not represent any coherent public policy philosophy. It only represents Kip's Law — Moulitsas yearning for central planning, so long as he gets to be the central planner ... complete with government research grants in every garage!

It's easy, even cute, for Democrats and libertarians to seek some tertiary commonalities (yes, we like roads too), or to focus exclusively on civil liberties (perhaps Moulitsas could explain the never-ending Democratic capitulation on that issue?). But the notion that Democrats see libertarians as a source of "new ideas," rather than of mere votes against the Big Bad Republicans, remains completely unproven, even after Moulitsas' grand tome.

Hopefully the respondent essayists will, unlike Moulitsas, actually discuss some specific and substantive issues (outside of civil liberties). Social Security, smoking bans, campaign finance reform, the War on Drugs, farm subsidies, the Ninth Amendment, the estate tax and the War on Obesity might be a good start.

Stay tuned...

More thoughts from LLP, Inactivist, Hammer of Truth.

Next up, after Markos Moulitsas pretty much got universally ridiculed for his anti-corporate screed essay suggesting that libertarian ideals are consistent with liberal Democratic policies, is Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council:

So, if you're looking for government to close up shop, don't vote Democratic. Unlike George Bush and the Republican Congress, we'll give you accountable government that lives within its means. But we want government to do something useful, not just sit there.

"Useful" to be defined, naturally, by Bruce Reed.

Bill Clinton produced the first balanced budget and the first surpluses in 30 years. He cut the size of the federal workforce by 400,000, and imposed a level of spending restraint the federal government hasn't seen before or since.

No, the dot-com boom, the "peace dividend" and — most importantly — gridlock did that. Libertarians cannot of course "vote" for a stock market bubble or to re-win the Cold War, but we can vote for gridlock. The "D" at the ballot box is purely incidental. (Also consider local politics — have states or municipalities where Democrats have wide and deep control of the fisc shown a "Clintonesque" track record? Of course not.)

Just as important, the very essence of limited government is that it must be purposeful, performance-based, and mission-driven. When the purpose is not clear and certain, the outcome and the cost will never be.

The way to get government to do less is by making sure government has something to do? Sorry, but libertarians know better than that.

It is time to end corporate welfare as we know it. We were right to reform the broken welfare system for single mothers, who responded heroically by going to work and welcoming their independence. Ending corporate welfare will have the same impact on both the political and the business world. We cannot compete in a world that is flat if we let every interest in Washington put its thumb on the scale. If we level the playing field by abolishing unnecessary subsidies, we’ll advance the general welfare and be in a much stronger position for the global competition ahead.

Fine — but can we add government-spawned labor unions, which are far worse for our global competitiveness than corporate welfare could ever be, to the list of things to abolish? And while we're on the subject — why do we have public employee unions? If the purpose of collective bargaining is to protect "helpless" workers from "evil employers," then do government employee unions imply that the government is also evil? Libertarians know the answer — does Reed?

And on the question of corporate welfare and global competitiveness: The last time I checked, Robert Byrd was a Democrat — I wonder how Reed and his Democratic Leadership Council felt about the perverted "Byrd Amendment," which imposed protective tariffs on politically favored industries and turned the receipts over to the firms themselves. You don't get more "corporate welfare" than that — was Byrd being a "bad Democrat" when he got the law enacted?

All in all, a far better showing than Moulitsas' blather. But that's not saying much.

Next up at Cato Unbound's series on what libertarians may or may not have in common with Democrats is Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of The American Prospect.

After quickly dismissing libertarianism as "about as germane as Trotskyism," Meyerson, in classic would-be central planner style, lectures us on how capitalism is "oppressive":

To argue, as a classic libertarian might, that a consumer is as free to switch banks as a bank is to sell its data neglects to note that a bank that doesn't sell its data is at a competitive disadvantage with one that does, and a consumer who can't find a privacy-protecting bank is simply out of luck.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Demand creates its own supply. If banks see no need to compete on "privacy," it's because people don't (yet) want it, not because they're powerless or stupid.

People demanded ATMs — they got ATMs. They wanted longer hours and shorter lines — they got it. They wanted investment services in branches — they got it. They wanted fee-based banking rather than spread-based banking — they got it. Then some decided that, no, they'd rather go back to low-fee / high-spread banking — they got it.

If and when they (not just Meyerson, but "they") want more data privacy than they now receive — they'll get it. As data privacy concerns — a recent phenomenon — continue to make the headlines, don't be surprised when banks start explicitly competing on privacy issues. A competitive industry — which retail banking is* — evolves.

Libertarians understand this.

In short, the free play of markets can be a threat to individual freedom, unless individual freedom is a term that applies only to businesses and not to their consumers or employees or the people who must breathe their pollutants.

So banks cause acid rain?

A typical central-planner bait-and-switch. Libertarians of course acknowledge the potential for true externalities (e.g., "pollutants") and have little reservation over government-imposed corrections for them (when properly crafted and neutrally applied). But "banks aren't competitive enough for my tastes" is not an externality.

Libertarians understand this.

Indeed, the central insight of 20th century liberalism was that freedoms conflict, that a company's freedom to dominate the marketplace was often in conflict with a consumer’s freedom to find a product at a fair price, or a worker's freedom to find a decent job or form a union, or a citizen's freedom to have an equal voice in the legislative process.

More mix-and-match. What does "an equal voice in the legislative process" have to do with wage and price controls or (compulsory**) union membership?

Actually this is nothing more than basic Kip's Law: "fair" — to be defined by Meyerson; "decent" — to be defined by Meyerson. And so on.

What could possibly be more "fair" than voluntary exchange? What could possibly be more "decent" than people minding their own business — in every sense of that phrase?***

And let's not ignore the economic realities of liberal economic intervention. Entrepreneurial companies such as Microsoft and Wal-Mart "dominate the marketplace" — how? Government-chartered monopolies such as cable television and defense contractors "dominate the marketplace" — how? The distinction matters; indeed it is all-important.

Libertarians understand this.

Meanwhile, what is the cheapest commodity on the planet? As (liberal) nanny-staters will tell you, it's calories. In the broad context of the totality of human history, food is astoundingly cheap.‡ So too are clothing, housing, basic energy needs, and all the trappings of a "decent" (Meyerson's term) human existence. Wherever there are (truly) "indecent" living conditions, wherever there is (true) poverty, wherever there is (true) disempowerment and disenfranchisement, you will invariably find a government opposed to capitalism.

Libertarians understand this.

But at some point, the Democrats will embrace a decisively larger role for the state in these matters because the public will demand it[.]

In the same way that they're (not) now demanding data privacy by banks?

Notice how the liberal borrows from the current conservative playbook. "The will of the majority" is absolute — if we vote for it, then it is by definition proper. So who is Meyerson to stand aghast when "the will of the majority" is to constitutionalize anti-gay bigotry, or to exempt flag desecration from First Amendment protection, or to eavesdrop on American citizens on American soil without a warrant?

Libertarians understand this.

Unenumerated rights — whether couched in the Ninth Amendment, "penumbras and emanations" or extra-constitutional natural rights theory — either exist or they do not. If you cherry pick from among them — "I like sexual substantive due process but not economic substantive due process" — then you have no rational basis to harrumph when your opponent says the opposite, just as your preference for vanilla does not give you the right to ban chocolate.

Libertarians understand this.

We feel no need to squabble over "this form of autonomy" versus "that form of autonomy." We recognize the irreconcilable contradiction of embracing Lawrence while rejecting Lochner.‡‡ We acknowledge the self-evident truth that without property rights, no other rights are possible. We accept the metaphysical fact that the laws of economics cannot be repealed by any legislature or struck down by any court.

We are, in short, the true "reality-based community."

More thoughts at Distributed Intelligence, ZenPolitics, LLP.

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(*Or does Meyerson yearn for the days when retail banking was price-regulated, complete with "bankers' hours," a federal ban on interest-bearing checking accounts, and free toasters instead of high yields on saving accounts?)

(**So much for 20th century liberalism's concern for "individual freedom.")

(***Note Meyerson's semantic schizophrenia: First he's obsessed with "privacy" in the context of bank data but then shows contempt for the "privacy" of people's employment contracts.)

(‡And would be even cheaper if we abolished all farm subsidies and tariffs. How, I wonder, does Meyerson feel about that?)

(‡‡Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003); Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905).)

There's been a depressing amount of chatter in the libertarian blogosphere about this modest proposal:

Barack Obama is a libertarian.
Or, more correctly, a "left-libertarian" --

Obama and [his economic advisor, Austin] Goolsbee propose something entirely different -- not a triangulation, but a basis for crafting public policy orthogonal to the traditional liberal-conservative axis.

If this approach needs a name, call it left-libertarianism. Advancements in behavioural economics, public and rational choice theory, and game theory provide us with an opportunity to attend to inequality without crippling the economy, enhancing the coercive power of the state, or infringing on personal liberty (at least not to any extent greater than the welfare state already does; and as much as my libertarian friends might wish otherwise, the welfare state isn't going anywhere). The cost -- higher marginal tax rates -- is real, but eminently justified by the benefits.

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Anyone arrogant enough to summarily declare that this-or-that central planner proposal is "eminently justified" is merely an unexciting and unimpressive future entry on the Kip's Law pages. Definitely nothing "entirely different" here.

Meanwhile, I thought we had dispensed with this "liberaltarian" gobbledygook the last time an overly self-important liberal thought libertarians were unsophisticated bumpkin morons who could be easily conned into selling their votes, and their souls, for the political equivalent of a group hug.* I guess not. So be it.

As I've commented elsewhere, the only way one can call oneself (or anyone else) a "left-libertarian" is by using an illegitimate definition of "left" or "libertarian" (or both).

Here's a simple test I came up with: "Do you believe in Lochner-style economic substantive due process (i.e., unfettered freedom of contract among competent consenting adults)?"

If you answer "yes," then you cannot reasonably call yourself a leftist. If you answer "no," then you cannot reasonably call yourself a libertarian. QED.

What these "liberaltarians" are disingenuously trying to do is bootstrap the classical liberal amenability to a modest social safety net (but only for the truly incompetent) into a willingness to forfeit most if not all economic liberty (including any attempt to restrain taxes) for the sake of non-economic privacy. Stated differently: "Give us the New Deal and we'll give you Lawrence v. Texas").

That may be pragmatic coalition politics (I think not), but it is certainly not libertarianism, "left-" or otherwise.

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Note that "Obama is the least offensive candidate to libertarians" is not the same as "Obama is a libertarian." The former is perfectly reasonable; the latter is perfectly absurd. I myself continue to grapple with the viability of the former statement and whether to embrace it. Stay tuned.

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(*Ron Paul supporters notwithstanding.)

To review: There was recently a meme, hopefully a stillborn flash in the pan, suggesting that Barack Obama was a libertarian, or at least that he believed in some ill-defined mutant hybrid called "left-libertarianism."

Armed with that, I challenge anyone to find anything "libertarian" in this:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proposed a $75 billion economic stimulus plan on Sunday that includes worker tax credits, a one-time pension supplement and help to homeowners facing foreclosure.

The plan would include an immediate $250 tax credit to workers that could double if the economy worsens, a one-time $250 supplement to Social Security payments, a $10 billion fund to help homeowners facing foreclosure and a $10 billion fund to bolster states facing budget shortfalls amid lower tax revenues.

Take each boondoggle separately:

--Tax cuts are not "per se libertarian." Indeed, targeted tax cuts to politically favored subgroups (notice that Obama uses the Democrat code word "worker" rather than "taxpayer") are about as un-libertarian an economic policy as can be imagined. It's merely the reciprocal of pork and earmarks. Meanwhile, making an obscenely progressive tax code even more progressive is also not a pillar of libertarian fiscal policy. (Again, "workers" and not "taxpayers" get help -- so do you think the overall tax distribution would become more or less progressive under this plan?)

--The entitlement elderly, who are already crippling the federal budget, get even more under Obamanomics. This is new thinking (i.e., "orthogonal to the traditional liberal-conservative axis") by a Democratic politician -- how?

--The housing bailout is merely another expensive program that rewards the "correct" people (homeowners) and the "correct" industry (housing). The fact that almost all these "correct" homeowners were, contrary to the histrionics of malcontents, not the victims of any "fraud" or "predation" (and many were in fact the perpetrators of fraud against their lenders) is overlooked. I see lots of "left-" and not much "libertarianism" here.

--Block grants to states, whatever the structure and whatever the excuse, are insolent violations of fiscal federalism and are per se anti-libertarian abominations. Nothing more need be said there.

As I summarized previously:

The only way one can call oneself (or anyone else) a "left-libertarian" is by using an illegitimate definition of "left" or "libertarian" (or both).

Obama's flaccid mish-mosh of tired Keynesianism and typical liberal faction-pandering is a perfect example. To call this "left-libertarianism" is to obliterate the concept of libertarianism altogether.

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Once again, I accept the premise that Clinton could be worse. That is not the point. The point is merely that it is patently absurd to call Obama a libertarian, "left-" or otherwise.

As a follow-up to, and in response to some criticisms about, my thesis that "left-libertarianism" is a self-evident oxymoron both facially and as applied to Barack Obama specifically, I thought it might be helpful to triangulate by way of a pair of Ross Douthat posts, both about the comparable fallacy of "left-conservatism" --

Exhibit A:

[Romney's economic pandering to Michigan voters] is what people like to call "industrial policy," and what Jonah Goldberg likes to call liberal fascism -- big business and big government working hand-in-glove for the purposes of economic nationalism. It's "sustained and detailed," all right, just as [David] Frum says -- a sustained and detailed infringement on free-market principle, and one that appeals to voters in places like Michigan precisely because it goes much further to the left than Mike Huckabee's substance-free talk about how the current period of economic growth isn't doing all that well by the working class[.]

Exhibit B:

[F]or weeks and months, conservative pundits -- from George Will to the denizens of the Corner -- have waxed hysterical about how Mike Huckabee's criticisms of corporate excesses and his discussion of working-class struggles represent, in Will's phrase, a repudiation of "free trade, low taxes, the essential legitimacy of America's corporate entities and the market system allocating wealth and opportunity." Yet now comes Romney, making an actual substantive policy proposal that violates free-market principle, and the response in conservative circles seems, well, muted.

To the extent that Douthat's premises are correct (and I do not wade deep enough into the muck of far-right commentary to confirm them), then his conclusion is irrefutable: Those conservatives who would "Swift-Club-for-Growth" Huckabee must surely express at least as much indignation toward Romney's ridiculous and shameful econo-blather in Michigan.

My point, however, is this: No one in this debate is seriously positing that there is such as thing as "left-conservatism." The only questions are whether Huckabee and Romney are deviating from conservatism, and if so then who is deviating more than the other?

So too with the fallacy of "left-libertarianism." I, for example, have my set of views -- philosophical, political, economic, moral -- which I call "libertarian." Few would take umbrage with that, since there is an objective basis for my calling it libertarian, based on widely adopted denotations and connotations of the word.

Now if I instead referred to my views as "socialist-libertarian" -- or "Jungian-libertarian" or "jazz-libertarian" or "zoop-libertarian" -- that would not make such appellations per se reasonable. Words have objective meanings independent of the person using them. Just because East Germany's Communists called their nightmare the "German Democratic Republic" doesn't mean it was a democracy. You are entitled to your own opinion; you are not entitled to your own dictionary.

So the fact that a few stray people, perhaps very smart people with entirely plausible worldviews, go around calling themselves "left-libertarians" is utterly beside the point. The point is, as I posted previously: The only way one can call oneself (or anyone else) a "left-libertarian" is by using an illegitimate definition of "left" or "libertarian" (or both).

Senator Chris Dodd is pulling double-duty in the headlines these days. First, as I already noted, he is proposing a flagrantly socialist intervention in the distressed mortgage market. Shame on him.

But then he turns around and does this:

Few things are more detrimental to this country than the erosion of and attack on the civil liberties we enjoy. This isn't a Democratic issue or a Republican issue; this is an American issue. If after debate, the Senate appears ready to pass legislation granting telecom providers retroactive immunity I will use any and all legislative tools at my disposal, including a filibuster, to prevent this deeply flawed bill from becoming law. More and more, Americans are rejecting the false choice that has come to define this administration: security or liberty, but never, ever both. For all those who have stood with me throughout this fight, I pledge, once more, to stand up for you.

Okay fine, I get it: There is a breed of politician who embraces -- even obsesses over -- privacy rights, but who also totally shuns any commitment to economic liberty.

My question remains this: What core philosophy allows such a hopelessly schizophrenic politics masquerading as "left-libertarianism"? You cannot have privacy rights without property rights. You cannot have property rights without freedom of contract. You cannot have freedom of contract without broad-based economic liberty. How, exactly, do the "left-libertarians" (with whom Dodd may or may not identify; I don't know) escape this flowchart?

The only answer I can come up with is: "It's the correct policy because I happen to like it." But that unimpressive variation of Kip's Law is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for "Left-Libertarians" to earn praise or support from "Not-Antilibertarian-Libertarians."

I don't read DailyKos for the same reason I don't read Hardy Boys books: there's no reason to. Neither adds anything to intellectual discourse; neither catalyzes the self-enrichment of the already-literate. DailyKos is the radical leftist blogger equivalent of poi: no taste or consistency whatsoever, but it helps the other, more substantive content last longer.

The latest self-humiliation by Moulitsas (who, recall, is supposedly a leading advocate of the fiction of "left-libertarianism") and his Cult of the Childish Pejorative:

For all the talk of "freedom" that the Paulbots claim to believe in, they sure as heck have been silent on the horrible FISA bill we're fighting to fix in the Senate right now. Same for Ron Paul. Why the silence? And the CATO people and the libertarian publications like Reason, where are they?

Here we are engaged in a huge civil liberties issue, and progressives are being forced to fight this thing alone. It's easy to talk about "liberty". It's much more impressive to actually do something about it.

That was, incidentally, the entire post.

It's true that I haven't blogged about FISA for a long time — by which I mean six days. It's true that "Terror v. Civil Liberties" (which I have also called the "War on Civil Liberties") is only one of my blogpost categories — have I no shame? It's true that my (non-exhaustive) chain of warrantless wiretapping posts "only" contains fifty entries, each of which is more substantive than Moulitsas' post by "only" an order of magnitude — what kind of libertarian am I?

More responses at Reason, Distributed Republic, Publius Endures.

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Moulitsas is of course as popular as he is precisely because he's so intellectually unsophisticated. Nothing appeals more to the Great Unwashed than an unwashed argument.

And nothing demonstrates this better than the kindergarten playground / tantrum factory that is his comments section:

--Why do Libertarians care so much about liberty from taxes, but not from oppression or government interference in one's private affairs? If they genuinely gave a crap about civil liberties ... well, they wouldn't all be Republicans, anyway.

--The truth is that many so-called libertarians just don't really give a damn about civil liberties.

--A libertarian is mostly a Republican who supports gay marriage and wants to smoke pot.

--I'll say it again — "libertarians" are simply wingnut Republicans trying to describe themselves in more fashionable terms. That's all they are.

--There is no such thing as a libertarian. It's simply a fictional concept put together in the abstract for purposes of argument, but there are no actual, real senitent [sic] beings who actually believe in classic "libertarianism", as we academically understand the word.

--The majority of Libertarians I've run across seem to only believe in liberty for themselves. The rest of the world can go to shit so long as nobody tells them what to do, takes their money, or interrupts their masturbatory fantasies of being rich by expecting them to do anything that is not ultimately self-serving.

--Libertarians just hate taxes and minorities and want to live in gated communities.

--Libertarianism is Pre-School for Republicans.

--This goes to the very heart of the libertarian philosophy. Not the one they profess, but the one they actually hold: Not giving a shit about others.

And that's just a sample of the high-brow discourse in the thread. As is always the case with sundry partisanship: when enemies are in short supply, they must be manufactured, like any other scarce good.

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This one's my favorite, incidentally:

George Bush was the libertarian that the Randoids dreamed about, I mean he was the John Galt who cut taxes, got rid of regulations and hell, he is doing a heckavajob with New Orleans and Baghdad so some future Howard Roark can do some work there.

Actually, I've long thought that George W. Bush was eerily reminiscent of "Mr. Thompson," who is clearly the President in the novel, though I believe that word is never used to describe him:

Head of State and a crafty pragmatist who believes everyone is open to compromise. When his goons capture Galt, Mr. Thompson tries futilely to persuade the inventor to take charge of the collapsing economy, tempting him with money and the trappings of power. When that fails, Mr. Thompson finally agrees to use torture.

Remind you of anyone?

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Meanwhile, I blogged previously:

Those political mainstreamers who do not share in this movement-that-Paul-did-not-create, the liberals and conservatives who prior to this presidential campaign had barely heard of an "isolationist / neoconfederate / 95% of all blacks are criminals / bring back the closet / Lincoln started the Civil War / the WHO invented AIDS / conspiracies everywhere" fervor now have — thanks to Ron Paul — a name for it: libertarianism.

Well, you can imagine how many times the words "Ron Paul" and "libertarian" appear together in the contributions to that don't-think-too-hard-it-hurts comment thread.

So now we have two radical anti-libertarians — Paul and Moulitsas — going out of their way to misrepresent libertarianism though a bizarre, self-contradicting hybrid of straw man attacks and guilt by association. They must really be scared of us.

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Turning now to our right flank: If we "sell our souls for a tax cut" libertarians are all in cahoots with the Republicans, then whence this?

The moral vacuity of dogmatic libertarianism is poisonous to public life. By teaching that 'greed is good,' strict free-market ideology holds out the promise that private vices can be public virtues.

The ironic part is that this wood-paneled-den drivel, written by infantile radical conservatives, could just as easily have been written by the infantile radical liberal Moulitsas. There would have been no way to tell without a byline. Go figure.

I repeat: They must really be scared of us.