That human beings start out crooked and prone to sin means we require strong social institutions meant to form us, and that we cannot thrive in their absence. It means the good of the individual cannot be achieved in a society that is not meaningfully attuned to the true common good. But that human beings are made in a divine image and possessed of inherent dignity means that each of us has rights that in practice amount to constraints on what society can do to us. In this sense, the conservative anthropology points toward both communitarianism and individualism, and the tension between the two emerges in every conservative effort to wrestle with real-world governing challenges.
Category Archives: Libertarian Thought
Isolation, attention, and totalitarianism
Joint attention episodes set the stage for infant learning. In many cultures and contexts, infants and children learn to attend to whatever adults attend to. This helps children learn their group’s language, social routines, and practical skills.
We learn by paying attention to what others attend to. I speculate that this is why in-class learning works better than watching a lecture on line. When I am in a classroom, others are paying attention to the speaker. This makes my attention to the speaker instinctive. I don’t have to use so much willpower to pay attention. But when it’s just me sitting in front of a computer, I have to will myself to pay attention. It uses up more effort and takes more out of me.
In the twentieth century, watching television or listening to the radio were often social activities. TV and radio could command our attention the way the speaker in a classroom would, through people paying attention to what others were attending to.
But we use 21st-century media in isolation. That means that the media need other means to command our attention. They cannot rely on our use of social cues. Instead, they have to rely on dopamine hits. Porn. Games. And demonization.
We get a dopamine hit by seeing the demonization of people with whom we disagree. So demonization becomes a winning Darwinian strategy in the age of contemporary media.
The whole point of writing The Three Languages of Politics was to describe demonization rhetoric under the assumption that people would not want to demonize. I thought that if you recognize the rhetoric, you would back away from it.
Instead, the religion that persecutes heretics justifies demonization. To criticize demonization is to be a heretic. In a world where people consume media in isolation, an ideology that justifies demonization has an advantage.
My thought is that the fact that we consume contemporary media in isolation has made made people more receptive to demonization, with its totalitarian characteristics. This is probably accentuated by the virus-induced isolation, which increases our use of contemporary media and reduces our social interactions.
More from John Tooby on coalitions
ancestrally, if you had no coalition you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, preexisting and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership. This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird. Since coalitional programs evolved to promote the self-interest of the coalition’s membership (in dominance, status, legitimacy, resources, moral force, etc.), even coalitions whose organizing ideology originates (ostensibly) to promote human welfare often slide into the most extreme forms of oppression, in complete contradiction to the putative values of the group.
.. . .Forming coalitions around scientific or factual questions is disastrous, because it pits our urge for scientific truth-seeking against the nearly insuperable human appetite to be a good coalition member. Once scientific propositions are moralized, the scientific process is wounded, often fatally. No one is behaving either ethically or scientifically who does not make the best case possible for rival theories with which one disagrees.
My thoughts:
Suppose that we can be either politically combative or scientifically neutral. If we are political, our tactics are intended to discredit the other team. If we were scientifically neutral, we would try to give as much credit as possible to all sides.
One might hope that, given a set of issues, over time we would expand the subset that we approach from a scientifically neutral point of view. Instead, we seem to be expanding the subset about which we are politically combative (scientists against science). This seems particularly true in academia, and I agree with Tooby that it is “disastrous.”
Tooby and Leda Cosmides wrote,
Hate is (1) generated by cues that the existence and presence of individuals or groups stably imposes costs substantially greater than the benefits they generate, and (2) is upregulated or downregulated by cues of relative power (formidability), and by cues signaling the degree to which one’s social network is aligned in this valuation. (It is also worth investigating whether, as seems likely, there is a special emotion mode “rage” designed for combat, which orchestrates combat adaptations along with murderous motivational processes.)
Notes for a TLP talk
1. Terms that describe the current state
–Negative polarization. Political energy comes from hatred of the other side. May not even like the leaders on your side.
–Zero cognitive empathy. Unable to imagine that the other side is reasonable. Makes you inclined to want to make the other side disappear.
–Asymmetric insight. The belief that the other side does not realize what its motives are, but you do.
2. The desired state
–Widespread cognitive empathy
–Goal in political arguments is to understand the other side, not to humiliate it.
3. Three-axes model
progressive: oppressor-oppressed
conservative: civilization-barbarism
libertarian: liberty-coercion
4. example: “de-fund the police”
5. axes of demonization?
6. the Trump era–elites vs. populists
7. example: defer to health authorities on the virus?
Everybody hates the libertarians
It’s not just Brink Lindsey. Patrick Deneen writes,
Until recent times, America has never been so foolish to consider itself a libertarian nation, much less had such a view advanced by so-called “conservatives.” We have had a libertarian public policy imposed by the mainstream of each political party: libertarian economics by elites on the right, and libertarian social ethos by elites on the left. This elite coalescence is represented no better than today’s two Supreme Court decisions, one which gives precedence to a corporation’s rights of property and profit (U.S. Forest Service v. Cowpasture River Preservation Association), and the other which continues to elevate sexual autonomy as paramount libertarian good that trumps all contesting claims (Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia). Will and Thompson mistake this aberration – foisted upon an increasingly recalcitrant and unhappy public – as the sum of the American tradition, rather than an aberration and deformation.
I stand by my critique of Deneen from two years ago.
Who else remembers Tom Lehrer?
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
and the Catholics hate the Protestants
and the Hindus hate the Moslems
and everybody hates the Jews
We are in the era of what political scientists call “negative partisanship,” where people feel at best lukewarm to their own side but are filled with fear and loathing for the other side.
TLP and police
Consider the phrase “De-fund the police” from a three-axes perspective.
From the oppressor-oppressed perspective, it sounds like a call to take resources away from oppressors and give them to the oppressed.
From a civilization-barbarism perspective, it sounds like a call to undermine civilization and pave the way for barbarism.
From a liberty-coercion perspective, it sounds like a misdirected effort. Excess coercion comes from unnecessary laws and unaccountable enforcement. For libertarians, reform would start with having fewer laws. Those who enforce the laws should be accountable for acting within the law themselves.
As is often the case these days, the libertarian view sounds the most sensible to me, followed by the conservative view. As to the progressive view, I understand the emotion but not the logic.
TLP on BLM
Kling talked about the question of police conduct in dealing with African Americans, which spawned the Black Lives Matter movement, and how each “tribe” thinks about the problem.
“The progressive framing of the issue emphasizes racism, among police and in society as a whole. Progressives put white police, or white society at large, in the role of oppressors, with African Americans in the role of the oppressed,” he wrote.
“The conservative framing of the issue emphasizes the need for order. Conservatives put criminal suspects and unruly demonstrators in the role of barbarian threats and put police in the role of defenders of civilization.”
“The Libertarian framing of the issue emphasizes the need for citizens to be free of police harassment.”
My sense is that the various tribes are behaving true to form these days.
Self-hating libertarians
Brink Lindsey joins their ranks.
Government excess, in other words, was not the fundamental problem. On the contrary, a large and activist government was all that stood between us and mass privation and suffering on a mind-boggling scale. Only government can mitigate the economic effects of the pandemic – in the same way it responds to other shocks that lead to other, less drastic slumps – by acting as insurer of last resort, using its taxing, spending, borrowing, and money-creating powers to sustain household spending and keep businesses afloat until resumption of something approaching normal economic activity is possible.
My view is that only entrepreneurial activity can re-organize the economy in response to the pandemic. The eventual post-pandemic economy will contain many new businesses, while others will have disappeared. Government impedes this process by creating friction and favoritism. It won’t help to give the Federal Reserve the powers that in China belong to the Communist Party.
Later, Lindsey writes,
the modern libertarian movement, which has done so much to shape attitudes on the American right about the nature of government and its proper role, is dedicated to the proposition that the contemporary American state is illegitimate and contemptible.
Lindsey plans two more essays in this vein. I hope that in at least one of them he will get beyond vague allegations.
So far, his essay reminds me of the Progressive narrative of the financial crisis of 2008, in which an “atmosphere of deregulation” supposedly unleashed the financial sector, but the specific causal mechanism is never spelled out. That is because the financial deregulation that actually took place were only intended to make that sector more competitive. Meanwhile, risk-based capital regulations were an effort to tighten up safety and soundness regulation. Ironically, it was those regulations that steered the financial sector toward mortgage securities.
Reality necessarily falls short of Progressive utopia. Rather than admit their own failures, Progressives externalize them. That is how they come to believe that libertarian ideology is a powerful and malignant force.
In his future essays, Lindsey should spell out the specific reductions in state capacity that libertarians imposed. In what ways have the powers of the President been limited? How have the un-elected officials of the bureaucracy been curbed? Which areas of economic life has government been kept out of? What government functions have been abolished or crippled for lack of funds? Under which Administration was government spending reduced?
Every day the news brings us stories of Progressives on the march, tramping out of college campuses and into the larger society, bringing their cancel culture and their contempt for capitalism and freedom with them. Meanwhile, Trump-era Republicans reject free trade and fiscal responsibility. Is this the time for libertarians to berate themselves?
Careful self-criticism is welcome. But coming when liberty in America is at the lowest point in my lifetime, reading an essay that merely echoes the Progressives’ anti-libertarian slogans and slanders left me disgusted.
The four political types, a follow-up
Yesterday’s post drew a variety of comments and criticisms.
I think I need to clarify my view of how conservatism relates to Mr. Trump. I see Mr. Trump in populist terms, exemplifying the honor culture. A pure conservative recoils from Mr. Trump. But conservatives live in a world in which he represents the main alternative to progressives, to which they also recoil.
The Saldin and Teles book, NeverTrump, captures the anguish that conservatives felt as they chose how to resolve this issue. You can think of them as adopting one of three positions.
1. Nevertrump. Do not reconcile with him. He is bad for conservatism and bad for the country.
2. Accept Mr. Trump as the best current alternative to progressivism.
3. Fully endorse Mr. Trump as spokesman for a future conservatism that is done with free-market ideology and globalization.
I myself feel most comfortable with those who chose (2), next most comfortable with those who chose (1), and least comfortable with those who chose (3). But all three positions have problems.
A big problem with (2) is that it goes in the direction of making conservatism a group identity, defined by its opposition to progressivism. The main problem with (1) is that it does not offer a constructive way forward. And I cannot go along with (3) because I still favor free markets and globalization.
The way I see it, Mr. Trump took some voters away from progressives, but he took many more voters–and most Republican elected officials–away from conservatives. Now conservatives are in the same place as libertarians, on the outside of the political process looking in.
Philosophy, disposition, honor culture, group identity
Here is a generalization that you are going to argue with, but eventually you may grudgingly find it helpful.
Libertarianism is a philosophy. Libertarians start with principles. They may disagree with one another about how to apply those principles, but they approach social issues as philosophical arguments. Think of Walter Russell Mead’s Jeffersonians.
Conservatism is a disposition. It worries about the bad inclinations of human beings. Conservatives believe that in order to overcome these bad inclinations, we must be formed by traditional institutions. Think of Walter Russell Mead’s Hamiltonians.
Populism is an honor culture. It demands personal respect. It reacts combatively to anyone who who appears to insult its honor. Think of Walter Russell Mead’s Jacksonians, or David Hackett Fischer’s borderers.
Progressivism is a group identity. Progressives are convinced above all that they are the good people. Their goodness is amplified by the evils that they oppose. Think of Walter Russell Mead’s Wilsonians or David Hackett Fischer’s Puritans.
Progressives value group solidarity over intellectual consistency. They are able to deny or forgive allegations of sexual assaults by Bill Clinton or Joe Biden, who are members of the good team, but they believe that allegations against Clarence Thomas or Bret Kavanaugh should have been disqualifying. They know that they have science and facts on their side, even as they insist that GMOs are dangerous, that women and men are equally disposed to pursue STEM careers, and that the “1619 project” deserves the highest award in journalism. In January, they knew that they were morally superior to anyone who feared the virus, because such fears were racist. Now, they know that they are morally superior to anyone who opposes the lockdowns.
The most basic rule of group survival is to reward people who obey the group’s norms and punish people who defect from the group’s norms. This rule is embedded in group identity and in honor culture. It is not embedded in conservatism or libertarianism, which puts those adherents at a disadvantage.