A fascinating exchange on the progressive libertarians vs. Ron Paul thread at the Liberty and Power blog:
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"Progress" is so passé (#116127)
by David Miller on December 2, 2007 at 8:27 PM
Steve,
Since this is the “history news network,” might I take exception with some of the assumptions you are making about history?
You write:
> But in the long run, the young will never sign on to a movement rooted in cultural conservatism.
Really? How do you know that?
It seems to me that your perspective on history here is rather dated, a typically “twen-cen” (twentieth-century) perspective.
The long-term course of human history, along with theoretical insights from evolutionary psychology, suggest that human beings, especially the young, are naturally “culturally conservative.” After all, since everyone was once young, and since young people have historically been a much larger fraction of the populace than they are in the US today, if the young were always “progressive,” one would expect that all of human history would have been a frenzied hurtling forward in a progressive direction.
It hasn’t been.
I’d suggest as an alternative that you GenXers have been culturally colonized by my generation, the Boomers (I’m about a decade older than you). We Boomers coined the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over thirty,” we managed to convince a lot of our elders that we were the vanguard of the future, and we hectored them that they had better go along with our definition of “progress” or be swept into the dustbin of history.
Isn’t it possible that the kids today, decades younger than you or me, view this whole “progress” thing as dreary lecturing by us over-40 types and find themselves more simpatico culturally with Ron Paul than with people who think that Mick Jagger is “hip”?
Don’t get me wrong – I despise wearing a coat and tie, and I walk around the house whistling Paul Simon or Lennon/McCartney songs (I even know the words to “Spanish Flea”). I’m a child of the ‘60s. But my kids think I’m out of it – they like dressing to the nines, and they think cool music means Tchaikovsky.
Anthony Gregory is probably the hippest guy on this board (he’s a rock musician from Berkeley!) and he seems to think Ron Paul is a cooler guy than you or me.
You also wrote:
>Libertarianism's progressive spirit is one of cosmopolitanism and openness to cultural change… We were born as a progressive and cosmopolitan movement…
Again, I think you simply misread history. The roots of the contemporary libertarian movement go back to the “Old Right” --- the anti-war/anti-welfare-state movement of the ‘30s and ‘40s that included such writers as Garet Garrett, Mencken, Nock, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Patterson, Mises and Hayek, Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Isabel Patterson, etc.
None of these people, of course, were Religious Rightists, but, if you actually read their stuff (I’ve read lots of it), I think you’ll agree that their personal style is closer to Ron Paul than to Ginny Postrel.
And, of course, the immediate progenitors of the libertarian movement were Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, etc., none of whom could be accused of being cultural leftists!
Steve, I’m not accusing you of being a bad guy or of failing to be a libertarian. For what it’s worth, you are, in my definition of the term, a “libertarian” (Lindsay and Postrel are not, which is just another way of saying I politically oppose them and their views -- I’d rather vote for Hillary than Ginny).
But it does seem to me that you hold some views on history which are mistaken.
“Progress” is just so passé.
All the best,
Dave
Re: “Progress” is so passé (#116129)
by Steven Horwitz on December 2, 2007 at 9:05 PM
If you think the history of libertarianism begins in the 1930s and 1940s David, it is you who are in need of a history lesson. My point was that *classical liberalism* as one of the great movements of the 18th and 19th century was rooted in ideas of progress and cosmopolitanism. I wasn't referring to "contemporary" libertarianism, but to the much longer history of classical liberalism, which was indeed, historically, of the left.
That contemporary libertarianism finds itself on the "right" is largely a result of the intervening era of socialism and the capture of liberalism by social democracy. But now that we understand well that socialism was, ultimately, a "conservative" movement, in attempting to resist the privilege-smashing of competition, my argument is only that libertarianism, as classical liberalism's contemporary heir, should regain its rightful claim to being the true progressive movement.
Let me add one last point:
I think that, ultimately, a commitment to the market is incompatible with much of what is called cultural conservatism. The open-ended discovery process of the market will always toss up new cultural forms and practices. Often cultural changes are rooted in economic changes driven by the growth produces by markets (I have argued that changes in the family in the last 100 years fit this pattern). To imagine that one can stop cultural change or even reverse it is no less utopian than to imagine one can stop economic change.
Even if our economy became much more free, I don't think we would see our culture change in the direction that many culturally conservative libertarians want. In fact, I think a freer economy would speed the current cultural trends. I'm not afraid of that in and of itself, and I wish that the culturally conservative libertarians would consider a bit more the relationship between free markets and the liberalization of cultural norms.
Re: “Progress” is so passé (#116140)
by David Miller on December 3, 2007 at 2:34 AM
Well, Steve, I’ll see you and raise you when it comes to knowledge of the cultural origins of libertarianism.
You bring up classical liberalism.
Okay, I’ll go there. The idea that Herbert Spencer or Jeremy Bentham (or, on this side of the pond, William Graham Sumner, Thomas Hart Benton, or Martin van Buren) were cultural leftists is, I’ll be blunt, crazy.
Part of the problem here is, of course, the terms “left” and “right,” which properly apply to one’s hands and feet. The application of those terms to politics is, at best, metaphorical, and has been remarkably protean through the centuries.
But, you were pretty clear that one of your complaints about Ron Paul is that he is not hip, i.e., that he is culturally conservative. And classical liberals were not hip. Indeed, I am one wild and crazy guy compared to most of the classical liberals, and I’m not that hip, either.
There was indeed a strain among libertarians in the nineteenth century, a few of the Tuckerite anarchists, for example, who were cultural radicals. None of us is denying that there has occasionally been such a strand in the libertarian heritage. But it has rarely been dominant.
And then let's go back to the libertarians among America’s founding fathers – those wild and crazy guys like Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick Henry, etc. Obviously, a bunch of cultural progressives? (Hint: Henry and Mason were both pious Christians.)
Or, what really interests me is the seventeenth century founders of the natural rights tradition – John Lilburne, Richard Overton, Roger Williams, the heroic Anne Hutchinson, John Locke, etc. Have you read “Free-Born John”? – a great book and a great guy. He was also drunk on religion – culturally, he was to the right, way to the right, of the late Jerry Falwell.
The founders of libertarianism were British Puritans (a minority of Puritans, of course, the majority were vicious authoritarians).
Rothbard claimed that libertarianism goes even further back to the late Scholastics, again hardly cultural leftists, but that goes beyond my own personal knowledge.
I am, politically, a radical “anarcho-capitalist”: indeed, I think most anarchists have too much faith in government and in contemporary institutions in general. I am sympathetic to Illich's idea of de-institutionalizing society and to Goodman's idea of "neolithic conservatism." But if once one acknowledges a distinction between being “leftist” politically and “leftist” culturally, it just does not turn out that most of the people in the libertarian tradition were cultural leftists.
I understand and agree with Rothbard’s point in “Left and Right: the Prospects for Liberty.” But you need to remember that at the same time Rothbard was arguing that libertarianism should, in a broader historical context, be considered “on the left,” he himself was a self-conscious cultural conservative.
Long before Ginny Postrel came out in favor of the mass murder in Iraq, I had expected that sort of thing from her. She had made quite clear that she cared more for “progress” and “dynamism” than for natural rights. She and her pals (like Brink) merely confirmed that point by supporting the mass murder in Iraq (“war” is too polite a word – let’s call a spade a spade).
Ron Paul is appealing to the kids. Ginny and her friends are not. The obsession with avoiding cultural conservatism is a temporary aberration of the twentieth century, along with smoking of cigarettes, preponderance of smokestack industries, watching the radio, etc. Every period of history has its oddities: “progress” was one of the many deadly quirks of the last century.
We’re moving into a new era now. The “progress” obsession is falling behind us. My kids’ admiration for Tchaikovsky, Jefferson, etc. seems to be the wave of the future, at least if the Ron Paul campaign is any indication.
As Huey Lewis said (see I am a child of the ‘60s! – Huey’s even older than me), “It’s hip to be square.”
Steve, you “progressive” libertarians lack contemporary relevance.
“Progress” is so passé
All the best,
Dave
