Saving
Language
DIGG THIS
This is another
chapter in my long-running series on language in politics and economics.
For previous entries, see here,
here,
here,
here
and here.
Today,
I am concerned to examine, and reject the practice of all too many
libertarians who have "cut and run" on the language issue.
These fair weather "patriots" are giving aid and comfort
to the enemy. I hope to convince them to "stay the course"
on this issue.
I refer
to the practice of ceding linguistic territory to our intellectual
and (im)moral enemies. Typically, they seize a perfectly good word
our side has long employed, make it their own, and almost but not
quite with our cooperation, use it as a stick with which to beat
us. We have been banished from the field of intellectual battle
on more than one occasion in this regard.
Perhaps
the hoariest example in this tradition is the word "liberal."
At one time, that was us. Then, the pinkos took it over.
We fought a rear guard action, for a while, content with the fall-back
position of "classical liberal." But this is not good
enough. It is time, it is long past time, to seize back this appellation,
without any help from the crutch of "classical." (Woods,
2005, p. 8, is a marvelous case in point.) To the extent we do so,
we will leave our friends on the other side of the aisle with no
choice but to embrace a more fitting characterization of themselves:
socialist.
No, wait; cancel
that. Let us borrow a leaf from these people and attempt to return,
with interest, the actions with which they have for so long complimented
us: let us wrest words from them. We, too, are, now,
socialists, or at least we can be, if we really want to do
so. Of course, we do not embrace public ownership of all the means
of production. However, we oppose anti-trust legislation, and favor
labor market competition. If Rothbard’s
"One Big Firm" one day takes over the entire economy,
and obtains private ownership of the totality of "society’s"
factors of production (think of a vast merger of Microsoft, Toyota,
McDonalds, Wal-Mart and a few other such economic behemoths) would
we oppose this by law? Of course not. So, our claims to be "socialists"
are at least as good as those of our colleagues on the other side
of the barricades who have seized "liberal." For under
this scenario, all the means of production would be owned by one
entity. True, it wouldn’t be a public one, but work with me here.
Of course,
as Man, Economy
and State so eloquently and amply demonstrates, there are
good and sufficient reasons for thinking that no such One Big Firm
could ever form in the first place under free enterprise, and if
it somehow did so, could certainly not long endure. But that is
entirely another (positive) matter, and we are here discussing normative
issues. Some people will criticize the foregoing on the ground that
the One Big Firm, if it ever took place, would use resources for
its own selfish ends, while when government takes over the commanding
heights of the economy, it does so in the interests of the general
public, that is, all of us. Anyone who believes this ought to take
a trip to Cuba or North Korea, or a time machine back to the good
old U.S.S.R. or Red China.
Socialism is
often interpreted to mean "from each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs." We libertarians can embrace
this, too, on a voluntary basis of course. What else do you suppose
takes place within the nunnery, or the convent, or the monastery,
or the kibbutz (abstracting from government subsidies) or the hippie
commune. The same goes for the typical American family. Does the
five-year-old girl eat in accordance with her ability to earn income,
or on the basis of her needs? So, rally around the hammer-and-sickle
banner, fellow comrade libertarians. You have only to lose your
(linguistic) chains.
Would this
modest proposal of mine if followed sow confusion in political discourse?
Of course it will. But don’t be a nattering nabob of negativism.
It was those guys who started up this language imperialism.
They are responsible for linguistic obfuscation. Okay, okay,
if they will give "liberal" back to us, I’ll let them
have "socialism." I am nothing if not generous. Look,
fellow libertarians, if we do not do something about this dire situation,
we will lose, even, our precious word “libertarian,” and, with it,
“liberty.” Why, people such as Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley,
Bob Barr, Dennis Miller, John Malkovich, Bill Maher, Richard Posner,
Henry
Simmons, and Brink Lindsey are already characterizing themselves,
or being characterized by others
(Rudy Giuliani) as “libertarians,” forsooth. According to some,
there are more famous
libertarians than you can shake a stick at. If we don’t hold
on to at least some of these descriptions, we will not be able to
engage in any product differentiation. We will have lost to battle
to civilize society because we will no longer have the terminology
with which to make our case.
What other
words are fast disappearing, under our very noses?
"Justice"
is another endangered concept. The barbarians have long ago concocted
the phrase "social justice." Why, my own school, Loyola
University New Orleans, among many, many others, has termed itself
"Social
Justice University."
There are two
possible responses to this verbal imperialism. One, articulated
by Hayek (The
Mirage of Social Justice, vol. 2 of Law, Legislation,
and Liberty Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, pp.
24–27) is to denounce social justice on the ground that is mere
camouflage, an attempt to sugar coat or place a veneer over socialism.
A thousand pardons. I meant Communism. (We are all socialists now.
I’m secure in my own socialism. See above. But, I draw the line
at Communism. I still have some few vestigial principles.)
An entirely
different stance is to attempt to claim social justice for our own.
(Look, it has a nice ring to it; who could be against social justice?
Okay, okay, maybe I’ve been working for the Jesuits for too long
now.) No, on a serious note, if I may be permitted a serious note,
in this interpretation "social justice" means, merely,
justice applied to the social realm, whatever that is, such as egalitarianism.
We, too, favor egalitarianism, provided, only, it is achieved on
a voluntary basis, such as through charity. Why should we cede such
a splendid sounding phrase to the forces of evil?
Then, there
is the entire issue of "environmentalism." It cannot be
denied that 99% of the people marching under this banner are watermelons
(green on the outside, red on the inside). "Red" is another
word I am entirely, and somewhat inconsistently (a foolish consistency
is the hobgoblin of little minds) ready to leave to the bad guys.
(With what dismay, then, do I learn that the states voting for the
Democrats are not the "Red states"? Talk about
confusion of nomenclature! But they are the ones perpetrating
this inversion.) So, should we blithely give up on the characterization
"environmentalist," content to allow them to run
rampant with it? No, say I. Let us, instead, embrace free market
environmentalism. Not, of course, that of the wishy washy weasely
Chicago style, but, rather, as outlined by own chief free market
environmentalist, Murray
Rothbard. (This, in my view, is the single best short treatment
of environmentalism ever written; if you read only one essay on
this topic, let it be this one.)
And what of
"environmental justice," another left wing shibboleth?
(By the way, as a libertarian I am neither of the right nor the
left; not a Communist nor a Nazi; nor a conservative nor a socialist;
I am something unique in the political economic firmament.)
We, too, in my view, favor environmental justice. And of what does
that consist, pray tell? Why, it is predicated on private property
rights based on homesteading, as explained by Locke, Hoppe and Rothbard,
coupled with the libertarian axiom of non-aggression, and applied
to environmental issues. Air pollution? It consists of trespassing
smoke particles and can best be dealt with by upholding property
rights. Species extinction? Privatize the elephants and rhinos.
Loss of fish stocks? Privatize the oceans. That is environmental
justice in my book, no matter what the other guys say.
Are we feminists?
You bet your boots we are (or at least can be if we want to be).
Not, of course, of the Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller,
Catharine MacKinnon, Barbara Ehrenreich, Betty Friedan ilk. Not
a bit of it. But there are female libertarians like Wendy McElroy,
Karen Selick, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Jane Shaw, Ellen Paul, Karen
DeCoster. Their views are good enough for me under this rubric.
Are we gay?
Yesiree. We’re all gay here, if I can be allowed to speak in behalf
of anyone other than myself. Are we not cheery? Are we not happy,
being involved in the libertarian attempt to promote justice, liberty
and (voluntary) socialism. Why, one of the great drawbacks of hanging
around with Murray Rothbard, as any of his confidants can attest,
was stomach cramps: from continual hour after hour of almost hysterical
laughter. Even Bill Buckley once characterized Murray and his merry
men as the joyous
libertarians. What could be gayer than that? (In this matter
I am a follower of the insights of Joe
Sobran.)
Do we libertarians
favor protecting the rights of homosexuals? Of course we do. These,
to be precise, are identical to the rights of all other people:
the right not to be aggressed against; the right to own property
through homesteading, purchase or trade; the right to take part
in the free enterprise system. That is it, of course. They certainly
have no additional rights, such as, for example, the right not to
be discriminated against. None of us have any such "right."
Speaking of
rights, what should our position be on the grotesquerie of "positive
rights?" Again, we are at the fork in the road. Down one direction,
we can expose this concept for the vicious fraud that it is: an
attempt to ride on the coat tails of plain old ordinary rights,
which most people respect, at least in principle. In this path,
we can make the case that "positive rights" have a not
so secret agenda: to steal property from those who have more than
the speaker thinks they should have, and to turn them over to those
he thinks have too little wealth (while usually taking a hefty cut
of the boodle for himself). But there is another option. It is to
embrace positive rights. Since all they really depict is
wealth, and we certainly favor getting rich, we can embrace this
monstrosity on those grounds. Here, we redefine them from coercive
egalitarianism to wealth creation. Look, the lefties are always
doing weird and perverse things like this, and depriving us of a
useful language in the process. We would certainly be justified
in borrowing a leaf from their playbook once in a while.
Another clarion
call of the barbarians is for diversity. We, too, can favor this
initiative. The easy way toward this end is to embrace diversity
of ideas, especially on college campuses, where they are
all but non-existent.
But we can embrace diversity in other ways as well. For example,
we can encourage people when dining out to sample of the cuisine
of many nations. One of the benefits of Manhattan, for example,
is that it features, within a small geographical area, restaurants
with very different types of menus. There are not too many other
places where you can get a kosher burrito, for example.
 Let
us conclude. A lot of this is tongue in cheek. Some of it I am really
unsure about. "We’re all socialists, now" doesn’t trip
lightly off the libertarian tongue. But there is a serious point
here, too. We are in the words business. Therefore, it behooves
us to use verbiage with caution. I don’t think I am being the Chicken
Little who is complaining that the sky is falling down in this regard.
Our political economic opponents have long been whittling away at
what constitutes acceptable language, and at the very least we ought
to be aware of this danger. Maybe, even, do something about it.
 I
wish to acknowledge the help of the following people in the preparation
of this column. None of them, of course, are responsible for the
errors still remaining in it, after their best efforts to dissuade
me from making them. They are: Wilton Alston, Michael Barnett, Pete
Canning, Max Chiz, Karen DeCoster, Jason Ditz, Mark Fulwiller, Anthony
Gregory, David Heinrich, J. H. Huebert, Stephan Kinsella, Manuel
Lora and Patrick Tinsley.
December
21, 2006
Dr.
Block [send him mail] is a
professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans. He is the
author of Defending
the Undefendable.
Copyright
© 2006 LewRockwell.com
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