Conservatism vs. Libertarianism

Recently, a conservative magazine editor was a guest on an increasingly popular libertarian podcast. Their topic was about ‘conservatism and libertarianism’. The guest and the host respect one another and banter with camaraderie, like old friends.

This article is a response to the episode. The purpose of this is to engage conservatives (which has been my purpose for a long time now). I have no interest in scoring rhetorical points, or engaging in controversy, or in gaining notoriety, or critiquing public figures in order to bring attention to them or to myself. For these reasons, it does not matter who the guest or the host are – the ideas alone matter to me and my response is aimed at a large number of folks who have or might engage in conversations like this. Furthermore, the host himself states at the end that he wants to be challenged on what he thinks. If anything within comes across as vitriolic to the host or the guest, that is certainly not the intent. My responses are certainly spirited — with the aim being to make my points with zest and clarity. When I first heard the episode, my blood boiled, on account of hearing the same tired non-arguments and cliches on a show where I had assumed it wouldn’t show up. Secondly, I wondered whether the host actually currently believes what he purported and implied here (and has truly gone the way of other post-libertarians) or whether he was merely massaging his guest’s ego and only pretending to do so only to bolster his audience/income stream, and he actually knows/knew better. In any case, I calmed myself down and promised myself that I would be as fair and charitable as I could.

My own background is relevant — I used to be a political conservative (20 years ago). After encountering libertarianism and then anarchism (10 years ago), I eventually rejected all political action since I came to consider it as inherently morally illegitimate. On the subject of law (or, lawful force or coercion), I understood libertarian voluntaryism (and, consequently, anarchism) to be the absolute and objectively moral position, to the exclusion of all others. Of course, the subject of law (or, lawful force or coercion) is only a core part of life and not the totality of life — which is a composite of many subjects and spheres. My own values, outside of that subject, i.e. outside the subject of law, remain traditional or “socially conservative”. Furthermore, I came to understand libertarian voluntaryism (and, consequently, anarchism) to be a fundamental break from the now-centuries long modern liberal project of Nation-State government. I came to understand political conservative ideology as merely, in most cases, an older form of liberalism (classical liberalism, which is a forebear of current progressive liberal order), and, in some cases, for e.g. considering the recent reactionary populist movements, as merely an older and more classical form of Marxist socialism, which is yet another forebear of the current progressive liberal order. In other words, after becoming a libertarian, I came to see the difference between ideological conservatism and progressivism as merely one of degree and not of kind. Lastly, at the level of the ruling elites, even any such minimal differences in degrees vanished as well — those so-called neoliberal and neoconservative ruling elites aspired to and eventually became a unified and non-ideological ruling class that sought to and mostly succeeded in growing worldwide financial and military hegemony and a worldwide empire, that saw entities currently outside its realms as enemies to be defeated or as allies to be assimilated into one totalitarian order.

With this background, we now delve into the episode.

The host starts out by correctly laying out the non-aggression principle (all initiation of aggression or violence is illegitimate) as being the foundation of libertarianism and correctly notes that conservatism does not have a similar principled foundation. At the outset, the host already sets an apologetic tone and concedes too much by saying that having a principled foundation, as libertarianism does, is akin to “reducing the complexity of life to an excessively simplistic proposition”!!! If a principle that is correct happens to be simple to understand, does that make it simplistic?! But, more importantly, imagining that the complexity of life as a whole needs to be under the purview and rule of a small group of violent parasites is truly both a colossal reduction and extremely simplistic and naive, not to mention immoral. Libertarianism does not deal with the whole of life — by definition, it only deals with the subject of law (lawful force/coercion) and, on this topic, it believes, among other things, that one may not initiate violence — already, this rules out dealing with the “complexity of life” through political (violent) means.

The host asks the guest about some foundational ideas of conservatism. I suppose I expected better from the host and anyone he interviews (I truly wondered if the host has yet read ‘A Secular Age’) — but, they both either avoided or were unaware of the embarrassing reality that, at its foundational core, both conservatism and progressive liberalism are all children of the modern secular project. The host mentions that Russell Kirk would not like to talk about ‘first principles’ as it pertains to conservatism. Why not? Is it embarrassing (as it should be) to own the fact that “conservatism is merely progressivism driving the speed limit”?

The guest side-steps the question by saying that the unstated essential principles of conservatism have no immediate application to the US since “we’ve” wandered so far away from those essential principles. Well, what are these essentials? Then, he attempts to give principles and gives us one (maybe?) by saying that we could start with this negative principle — “there are things that people must question and one of them is libertarianism (!!!)”. So, in other words, the allegedly negative principle he came up with for conservatism was that it consisted of ‘questioning some things’!!!Further, the first example he thought of as a thing to question was ‘libertarianism’!!!

The guest then goes on to describe libertarianism for us by using old and tired mischaracterizations. He starts by saying that (a) libertarianism starts with radical individualism. Wrong! It does not! Radical individualism is a statement about one’s values — adherents place a high value on independence and self-reliance. This has nothing to do with libertarianism — it is entirely orthogonal to the question that libertarianism answers (which is a question regarding the legitimate or lawful use of force or coercion). Now, there is a branch of logic and philosophy, known as Austrian economics or praxeology, that provides a deductive account of man’s actions and economics. This approach to economics, which libertarians believe is the only correct approach, is therefore based on methodological individualism (which has absolutely nothing to do with or is orthogonal to the type of lifestyle individualism that the guest alludes to and rails against and incorrectly ties with libertarianism). Austrian economics, founded on praxeology or methodological individualism, is the Misesian tradition. This tradition produced the likes of Rothbard and Hoppe, who have all contributed to providing a solid meta-ethical foundation for libertarian ethics, based on praxeology.

The guest finishes up the mischaracterization by saying that conservatives believe that we are social animals (again, implying what?....that libertarians believe that we are not social?!?!) and alluding to Aristotle’s phrase “zoon politikon” (because saying it Greek sounds cooler, while we casually and lazily and self-servingly conflate social and political concepts?). In any case, his conflation of the organic social nature of human beings with the collective political nature of the modern secular project of the Nation-State continues on and he finally admits that “we conservatives share this even with the Marxists” (it’s right there, straight from his mouth).

He then says that (b) the other thing that distinguishes conservatives from Neo-cons, leftists, wokists and libertarians is the existence of hierarchy as being essential to human existence, even if they can be made “equal” by the State!! (For now, let us ignore the fact that he pools libertarians together with the absolute most vile specimens of humanity in an odd drive-by). The assertion is wrong on so many counts. All Statists — whether the neo-con/neo-liberal elites or the ideological Marxists or Neo-Marxists (wokists) believe in a perverse sort of hierarchy — they believe that they or their criminal benefactors are humanity’s uber social engineers who sit and condescend on the rest of the lowly masses from up on high. Secondly, and relatedly, the State does not make all people “equal” — it merely aspires to make the ruled slave class masses equal in misery and depravity, while it elevates itself to the position of gods above those mere mortals. To his credit, he is correct that there is a natural organic form of hierarchy in human existence. This is a fine subject that belongs in the studies of sociology or anthropology. Libertarianism deals with law (to repeat myself). It is orthogonal to those other fields. If a libertarian is asked a question in those other fields, they may or may not give you the right answer (in my experience, they usually do answer correctly). Regardless, it does not add to or detract from the veracity of libertarianism per se.

He then expands on this by saying that societies that are “properly run” are not egalitarian (again trying to pin libertarians as egalitarians). As a libertarian voluntaryist (consequently, an anarchist) I believe that if a society is “run” (governed) at all, it is not “proper” (moral). Furthermore, such societies tend to be improper and depraved in many other ways too — and a chief way is that they fight against the nature of things, and the nature of things happens to be non-egalitarian (on this latter point, he is of course correct). So, ironically for him, a “properly run” society (i.e. a non-anarchist one) will tend to be egalitarian in the perverse way described above.

There is then a small segment on his not wanting to support governments that are not protecting him (allegedly an idea found in Hobbes, Burke, Aristotle and Aquinas) and his assertion that people do not have inherent rights. While libertarians reject positive rights, their foundational principle is essentially the one negative right of mankind. In any case, if he has no inherent rights, then what does he want to be “protected” by the government? Also, does he want his government to protect him from themselves? Or not? A lot of murky and muddled and half-baked thoughts. It goes without saying that libertarians reject governments altogether.

The host then reviews that segment and says that he agrees with a great deal of it and, in principle, libertarians can agree with most of it. Seems like a very generous interpretation of the phrases “a great deal” and “most of it”. I would have said “almost none”. The host then says that even Mises who was a “libertarian hero” was a utilitarian who was not comfortable with rights. So? Mises was a giant who saw a crack in the Matrix of the burgeoning Nation-State and boldly and courageously opened it, in order to begin to discover timeless and placeless eternal truths. There were other such classical liberal giants (Frederic Bastiat comes to mind). Standing on their shoulders, the modern Misesian scholarly tradition, including giants like Rothbard and Hoppe, greatly expanded their re-discovery of the foundational truth of libertarianism and anarchism. But, of course, the host already knows this, right?

The host then fairly represents libertarianism by stating that they do not reject social groupings, they just reject the non-voluntary organization imposed by a State. Almost immediately, and almost sounding apologetic for this small push back (or, maybe I’m imagining this), he moves on to the next tired cliche (“libertarians must tolerate and like drag queen story hour”) — this is a monologue that the host has done before, where he says that “we” (meaning, all libertarians) have gone off the rails by accepting and even encouraging social perversions. What?! Where?! Who?! First of all, we homeschool, so we are not aware of drag queen story hour in the real world, outside of conservatives crying on social media (which raises the question of why they’re taking their kids there). But, assuming this is prevalent, which “libertarians'' are going around saying we must accept this? I know there’s a goofy group of morons at Reason and CATO, who were maybe a little bit libertarian sounding decades ago, but revealed themselves to be empire elite shills. Everyone in the libertarian world ignores them. They are also small and uninfluential. Is the host alluding to this small, uninfluential group of leftist libertine lolbertarians? The host then drills home this castigation of libertarians by saying that “most libertarians are like this”. Really?! A few seconds later, he takes that back and says “a lot of libertarians are like this”, that they can’t accommodate an answer like “I don’t want to live in a society like this”. Again, really?!? Is the host stating that libertarians support forced cultural integration and are opposed to free association and dissociation? Really?!?! Doesn’t that go against the foundational principle he established and stated earlier?

The host bemoans his recent discovery that most people are not open-minded to having their wrong views challenged and changed through rational discourse. The insight itself is correct. So what?

The guest then says that the totalitarian Left is winning and will likely continue to win — so, what is the utility, he asks, in “us” (i.e. conservatives) continuing to defend the classical liberal (by which, he also thinks he means libertarian) position on free speech. Shouldn’t “we” also abandon it, like the Left? I ask back — what does it matter? You are losing anyway, in your estimation — and now you propose that you are going to both lose your principles (albeit little that you had to begin with) in addition to politically losing to the Left. How is any of that a win?

The host again pushes back a little and tries to defend free speech — but, yet again, seems to concede too much by portraying his desire to not live near leftists or to not want to listen to them as somehow being contrary to free speech. ‘Free speech’ is the idea that you won’t violently hurt someone for saying words — it doesn’t mean that you need to listen to people you don’t like, let alone befriend them or live near them. Again, oddly, the host seems too eager to use conservative terms and terminology, which are often ambiguous, imprecise or ill-defined, as seen here. Perhaps, this is his way of being a generous and charitable host. The host then brings in another half-baked conservative notion, viz. “neutrality in the public square”. Again, this notion completely disregards the true and correct libertarian understanding that there is no such thing as a “public” square — there are merely owner-occupied spaces and theft-aggrandized spaces (in addition to unowned spaces).

While the previous segment shows that conservatism lies squarely in the center, and near the origin, of the modern Nation-State liberal program, the guest ironically goes on to say that the liberal age is passing away (correct, in the sense that the conservative/classical liberal age is indeed diminishing and giving way to progressive liberalism, by logical necessity), and that libertarianism is a part of it, “even if not the totality of it”. This level of disingenuousness and bad faith argumentation triggered me – even if it was sincere, it seems like people of his stature need to be far more knowledgeable and circumspect. This is akin to saying that “Mormonism is not the totality of Islam, it is merely a part of it”. Even the last part alone would be wrong — but, the addition of the first part anchors the uninformed naive listener much more deeply and strongly into the falsehood (by implying that Mormonism is almost, even if not entirely, the whole of Islam).

Refreshingly, in the next section, the host alludes to how a lot of people do what the powerful elites and credentialed people tell them to and the guest agrees.

Almost immediately after this (in what was now becoming a pattern) the host immediately moves the conversation back from universal truths to conservative dog whistles and red meat (again, the most generous and charitable read of this is that the host is a generous and charitable host). Expectedly, he turns to ‘transgenderism’. He projects frustration and anger at the Left’s illogical and mostly successful attempts to pervert language, meaning, biological facts, reality, etc. I get that. But, isn’t most of this self-fulfilling? Isn’t ignoring stupidity and absurdity the best way to kill it? Isn’t impotent resistance and whining and the open attempt to bring it negative publicity only going to strengthen the resolve of those who are determined to gain the reigns of power by any means? Getting people to pretend like obvious falsehoods are true is a chief weapon they employ, but it is not the only weapon — a more powerful weapon is getting people to complain loudly and powerlessly about it, thereby blowing it far out of proportion and making it a more manifestly powerful threat than it otherwise would have been.

The host then asks the guest about his main conservative thinker influences. The guest brings up Burke, European counter-revolutionaries and Aristotle chiefly. The guest contrasts Burke and Locke (like many conservatives, he believes that Locke was a libertarian, in the fullest sense we understand it today — even if, in essence, all the Lockean ideas are closer to conservatives’ aspired minarchism than to libertarianism). The guest reiterates his influence from Thomas Hobbes.

They speak about religion and conservatism — of human “original sin”, limitations, providence etc. He takes a jab at neo-pagans. I deduced that this is an uncomfortable and embarrassing sore spot for Hobbesian/Aristotelian conservatives who also want to like Christianity, since neo-paganism, whether Hellenic, Germanic or Norse, is a more fitting and increasingly popular metaphysical account for blood-and-soil ethno-nationalist Hobbesian conservatism.

In the next segment, the host states that conservatism and libertarianism (“to a lesser extent”) operate at a disadvantage because they recognize limits (correct — but, libertarianism recognizes these limits most fully and conservatism less so, so, if anything, it is conservatism that has lesser of a disadvantage in the current political and cultural milieu). He notes the modern Messianic/religious utopian and religious vision of the Nation-State program – a correct observation but one that is not an indictment of libertarianism. Again, there’s a lot of muddling — it is conservatism that sits squarely at the origin of this program – so his observation is an indictment of conservatism. Conservatism is minarchism or classical liberalism.

Towards the end, there is another refreshing segment on universal moral norms, and the fact that the Left are not relativists but are, instead, moral absolutists. The host then gives a good accounting of natural law that correctly grounds it in the telos of our rational nature — and distinguishes it from primitivism and Ludditism. The guest concurs and adds that Aristotle gave us the similar and related concept of ‘natural reason’. He brings up (again) the oft-repeated complaint of the attack on traditional gender roles etc. and the fact that the Left cannot be convinced by reason. That is correct. What does the guest (and his kind generally) propose we do about it? Nothing coherent or useful. The host brings up another common complaint — humans are distinguished by reason, and yet people are not perfectly rational (yes, indeed — this is the whole thesis of our broken or sinful natures that they just alluded to earlier and is a key insight of Christianity). But, for the host, this reality makes democratic argumentation and consensus infeasible. Again, yes, indeed! This is a key insight of libertarianism and anarchism, tied to the idea that the State is mere brute power and violence, and has nothing to do with rational, peaceful discourse and negotiated consensus. Of course, the host knows all this (since he is well-known as one of the world’s leading scholarly exponents of the theory), so it is again odd that he did not present it as such and instead sympathized with the half-baked and theoretically incomplete and inconsistent conservative view of the world.