Via
Tyler Cowen, I see that Daniel Klein and Jason Briggeman, two
George Mason economists, have published a paper (pdf)
claiming that conservative magazines, including The
American Spectator, are not pro-liberty.
They review the records of the Spectator, National
Review, The American Enterprise, and the Weekly
Standard on pro-liberty stances regarding sex, gambling and
drugs. They find that National Review is generally the
most pro-liberty on these issues, but that overall all the
conservative magazines lean anti-liberty. They conclude:
This investigation underscores that nowadays the menu of major
public philosophies offers three options: conservatism, social
democracy, and classical liberalism/libertarianism. Only the
third upholds the presumption of liberty.
This is a sweeping, sweeping generalization. This conclusion
reduces all kinds of arguments about the nature of liberty and
the role of government in upholding liberty to grossly
oversimplified terms.
In reaching such a conclusion, Klein and Briggeman employ big and
questionable assumptions about which positions in policy debates
about sex, gambling, and drugs are the pro-liberty positions. In
fact, they don't even make it clear what exactly they consider
the ideal pro-liberty position to be But to state outright that,
for example, advocating regulation on prostitution or pornography
is a clear violation of liberty (as they seem to do) requires an
intellectual defense. I would have thought it obvious that there
are conservatives who espouse those "anti-liberty" positions
because they believe they are the true pro-liberty positions. For
example, although I am personally anti-drug war, it is not
apparent to me that any conservatives who argue for the drug war
are secretly authoritarians. I know of plenty of folks who could
provide an intellectually honest pro-liberty defense of all the
positions Klein and Briggeman consider anti-liberty as a given.
So in short I experience no cognitive dissonance when I label
myself both conservative and pro-liberty, nor for that matter
when I write for The American Spectator.
