Is the old conservative-libertarian alliance, what National
Review co-founding editor Frank S. Meyer called fusionism,
dead? Need we replace it with a new fusion of liberalism and
libertarianism?
Writing in the current New Republic, Cato Institute
scholar Brink Lindsey answers yes. He makes some
specific suggestion on where liberals and libertarians might find
common ground in economic policy, like reform of agriculture policy
and certain consumption-based tax reforms (he approves of Al Gore’s
proposed swap of payroll taxes for carbon taxes). But Lindsey goes
further than merely calling for a political marriage of
convenience; he calls for “a real intellectual movement, with
intellectual coherence. A movement that, at the philosophical
level, seeks some kind of reconciliation between Hayek and
Rawls.”
The problem with this idea is that classical liberalism (or
libertarianism) and modern liberalism (or progressivism, or
egalitarian liberalism) are fundamentally at odds philosophically.
The crux of the split is the difference between negative and
positive liberty, a difference that illuminates how libertarians
and liberals are separated even when they seem to be allied. Take
some of the areas that Lindsey cites as common ground between
liberals and libertarians:
Both reject the religious right’s homophobia and
blastocystophilia. Both are open to rethinking the country’s
draconian drug policies.
While it’s true that libertarians and liberals both support gay
rights, they mean different things by that. Libertarians believe
homosexuals have the right to live the sexual, emotional, and
financial life they choose without government interference; this is
a negative right that demands government restraint. Liberals
believe that homosexuals have the right to have societal approval
of their choices; this is a positive right that demands government
action that encroaches on the fundamental (negative) right to free
association that is enshrined in the First Amendment. Matthew
Yglesias, a liberal who takes his ideas seriously,
has put it this way:
[A] lot of the views liberals tend to think of [as]
libertarian-ish liberal positions aren’t actually especially
libertarian at the end of the day. For example, liberals, like
libertarians, don’t think the coercive authority of the state
should be deployed to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
Unlike libertarians, however, liberals generally think the coercive
authority of the state should be deployed to prevent
discrimination against gays and lesbians. We think that
landlords shouldn’t be allowed to refuse to rent houses to gay men,
that bartenders shouldn’t be allowed to refuse to serve them, that
employers shouldn’t be allowed to fire them, etc. Liberals believe
in a certain notion of human liberation from entrenched
dogma, prejudice, and tradition, but this isn’t the same as
hostility to state action, even in the sex-and-gender
sphere.
The same goes for blastocysts. Leave aside the fact that there are
plenty of pro-life libertarians out there (almost every Libertarian
Party convention features a platform fight over the abortion plank,
which in its current incarnation acknowledges “good-faith views on
both sides” of the issue). Even leave aside the Luddite leftism
that
former Reason editor-in-chief Virginia
Postrel has fingered as the most dangerous long-term threat to
research. Libertarians who oppose outlawing research with embryos
are protecting a negative liberty; liberals go further and actively
advocate federal funding for such research. (Some libertarians who
write on this topic do seem to like science even more than they
dislike government, but that is
an
imprudent departure from the default libertarian position on
the matter.)
One can also see the philosophical divide between liberal and
libertarian opposition to the War on Drugs. A couple weeks ago,
Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko returned from a Students
for Sensible Drug Policy conference feeling “conflicted by [his] co-conspirators in the
drug reform movement.”
Longtime drug reformer Eric Sterling (a guy I generally
admire), for example, said at the conference that his first step
toward a post-prohibition America would be “universal health care,”
accompanied by comprehensive treatment that addicts could obtain
rather easily — in Sterling’s words, free treatment should be “as
easy as ordering a pizza.”
Terrific. If there’s one surefire way to make sure America
never reforms its drug laws, it’s telling the public that
step one in “drug reform” would be to have taxpayers foot the bill
for morphine clinics, needles, and the local addict’s relapses.
This would all still be quite a bit better than today’s
approach… But it’s a far cry from treating American citizens as
actual adults, capable not only of making their own decisions about
what they put into their bodies, but also of assuming full
responsibility for those decisions.
Lindsey believes that “an honest survey of the past half-century
shows a much better match between libertarian means and progressive
ends” than between libertarian means and traditionalist ends, the
core of Meyer’s fusionism. It’s true that many traditionalists hew,
implicitly or explicitly, to their own version of positive liberty,
what in 17th Century Puritan writings was referred to as liberty
from sin. But when government itself becomes an engine for cultural
upheaval — that is, when traditionalists are on the defensive —
they join libertarians in pursuit of negative liberty. The Hyde
Amendment, which strictly limits federal funding of abortion, is an
example of traditionalists meeting their ends by libertarian means.
It is not obvious to me that recent history shows that
traditionalists have deployed the heavy hand of government more
often than liberals have. But even if they have, the results of the
November election should put traditionalists on the defensive once
again, making them better allies for libertarians than they have
been. And as the new Democratic Congress rolls out the
more awful bits of its agenda, it’s a safe bet that the
strongest pushback will come from conservatives. That makes this a
peculiar time to declare the conservative-libertarian fusion a dead
letter.
LINDSEY, WHO SUPPORTED THE Iraq War before the invasion and later
changed his mind, doesn’t mention foreign policy in his essay. It’s
an odd omission, since it’s clear that many dovish libertarians
have lately been attracted to the Democrats primarily in reaction
to the Bush administration’s war-making. Foreign policy divides
libertarians amongst ourselves; some libertarians still base their
politics entirely on the non-aggression axiom, and a larger group of
libertarians are by default skeptical of any use of force (since
the Cato Institute’s founding in 1977, Operation Enduring Freedom
in Afghanistan is the only U.S. military action that its foreign
policy experts have supported). Others — like me — believe that a
robust foreign policy is both acceptable and prudent. If foreign
policy remains the primary fault line in American politics, dovish
libertarians may be bound to the left for the foreseeable future.
But they will be bound to the left by their dovishness, not by
their libertarianism per se. Of course, the same may be true for
libertarian hawks; if both parties remain as enthralled with big
government as they have been in the Bush era, every libertarian may
be forced to become more or less a one-issue voter. But if we do
avoid that unhappy fate, our conservative friends are likely to
remain our most promising allies.
