Systems are hard. Institutions are hard. If your goal is to replace the current systems with better ones, then destroying the current system is 1% of the work, and building the better ones is 99% of it. Throughout history, dozens of movements have doomed entire civilizations by focusing on the “destroying the current system” step and expecting the “build a better one” step to happen on its own. That never works. The best parts of conservativism are the ones that guard this insight and shout it at a world too prone to taking shortcuts.
Thanks to a commenter for recommending the post. Martin Gurri’s fear in The Revolt of the Public is that exactly the form of nihilism that Alexander fears is what the Internet facilitates.
Here is a thought: If you could push a button that would destroy everyone’s faith in government, in order that they would become receptive to libertarianism, would you do it?
Maybe the question is too ill-specified. But my answer would be “no,” and in that sense I am conservative. I certainly would like to see people change the way that they think about government, so that they wish it to take on more less responsibilities and face fewer more constraints, but I do not want to blow things up so that we can start over.
My view on Clinton vs. Trump has been different. I see Trump’s authoritarian tendencies as almost certain to be restrained by the media, by left-wing elites, and by important elements of the Republican establishment. Even if we grant that Clinton is cautious, how would she react to, say, a government debt crisis or continued escalation of he costs of Obamacare? My guess is that her response would be authoritarian, with more regulation and controls. And there would be no effective institutional opposition.
However, it is not an easy call. I agree that a Trump victory would probably harm conservatism and libertarianism more than a Trump defeat. And that is worth taking into consideration.
But my answer would be “no,” and in that sense I am conservative.
That’s my answer too, but it’s because I’m a small-l libertarian, not an anarchist. And also because I don’t think destroying trust in government would make enough people receptive to libertarianism anyway. As a libertarian, I want the government to be trusted because it does fewer things and does them well (while being as boring as possible — as boring and competent as, say, the local authorities that maintain our local sewer system). I really don’t have a good idea how we move in that direction, but I *really* I don’t think it runs through Trump.
Well, not everybody would use the word “authoritarian” to describe “regulation and controls,” whether or not the ones in question are advisable.
And “left wing elites”…
Eh. You sometimes have interesting points when on the margins, but your basic world-view just seems extraterrestrial to me. I should probably just stop trying to think of new ways to say this.
I confess your implied views seem extraterrestial to me.
How are regulation and controls not possibly authoritarian?
It seems manifestly obvious that there exist authoritarian possiblities through more or excessive regulation or controls.
Is it that you just think these unlikely to be used in an authoritarian way? I’ve read positions from both the left and right worrying about the precedent of Obama’s executive orders.
LoL. What’s wrong with the mere locution left wing elites? I’m flabbergasted that you’re just bowled over by the very deployment of the phrase. Like he said “embedded covert Russian agents plotting to overthrow the government”.
What the most charitable construal here?
Yes, obviously, you do acknowledge elite liberals exist, but don’t exercise power in any disproportionate way? Or there not going to reign in Trump?
If someone so moderate and deliberative like Arnold Kling’s views seems extraterrestrial to you…are you an alien?
“Here is a thought: If you could push a button that would destroy everyone’s faith in government, in order that they would become receptive to libertarianism, would you do it?”
Alex Tabarrok has a post up saying how:
“Diversity can reduce trust and a society that combines distrust and a powerful central government threatens to oscillate between civil war and authoritarianism. Under limited government, however, a little distrust can not only be managed it’s a positive.”
Bryan Caplan and other libertarians have endorsed this “import immigrants to destroy social trust so that support for the welfare state collapses” narrative before. Besides its obviously sickening implications (lets all sit alone in our apartments distrusting one other and ordering things off amazon), its terribly naive. People may dislike making welfare payments to outsiders, but is there any country where this actually led to less welfare payments? Don’t the payments just go on, maybe get bigger, because now there is a huge new constituency that votes for them.
1) Import lots of people that hate small government
2) ???
3) Ayn Rand rises from the grave
He then goes on to make his most ridiculous comment.
“If America were more homogenous, for example, we would have abandoned freedom of speech and religion a long time ago. It’s precisely because we can’t agree on what to say that we let everyone say what they want.”
Because diverse America gave us speech codes, safe spaces, and the entire PC package.
Free speech comes from trust. When you trust that someone is on your team, even if they disagree with you, such disagreement can be allowed, because it doesn’t represent an existential threat. If the person is an outsider intent on working against your interests, then speech is just another battlefield in the conflict between you two sides. Trust is integral to the free flow of ideas. That he could hold an opinion just shows what an autistic he is.
Immigration and PC represent threats that must be met. To do nothing ensures their victory by default, and that’s not a conservative position. Conservatism requires more then “do nothing”. Sometimes that status quo itself has negative drift built into it.
“People may dislike making welfare payments to outsiders, but is there any country where this actually led to less welfare payments?”
Yes, it happened in the US.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/immigration_and_2.html
During the farm bill debate there was a push to cut food stamps. The welfare to work law was introduced in the 1990’s and Congress raised the retirement age for social security in the 1980’s. Several times Republicans have invoked the idea that the poor arent hard working in order to push for reduced benefits. That’s why most welfare tends to accrue to people who are perceived as like Republicans such as veterans benefits, Medicare, Social Security, and farm aid. The only major exception is Medicaid and Medicaid is despised by Republicans.
And they’ve been so successful stopping Medicaid. Hey, didn’t we just massively expand Medicaid and pass Obamacare?
Welfare to work is pretty small beans.
Get back to me when a modern first world country of size dramatically cuts the welfare state because there are more NAMs around (and not because its simply too bankrupt to pay welfare anymore).
Seriously. What a crock. Diversity has brought no massive reductions in welfare spending. Haha.
Liberals will have absolutely endless opportunities to expand the welfare state by importing more Mexicans and Third World denizens. The diversity grievance theater will never end and they will be agitating for all sorts of handouts.
Of course, if you don’t support these ideas for whatever reason you will be tarred and feathered as a racist.
Evidently, Caplan lives in a world where political correctness doesn’t work to make reducing welfare benefits to minorities ipso facto racism.
“No” here too. Though on any multiple choice survey, I would score “strong libertarian”, put me in a roomful of libertarians and my instinct is to run away.
Libertarians think people are rational – how crazy is that?
Ideally, a Trump win at the polls would trigger an immediate repeal of all accrued presidential powers, followed by the electoral college remembering its duty.
“The best parts of conservativism are the ones that guard this insight and shout it at a world too prone to taking shortcuts.”
There are three ways to react to such a statement, and you probably can think of exemplars of all three types.
1. Robustly False – The status quo is evil, and this is the kind of false argument only made by people who are trying to preserve it to maintain their own advantages, or who are otherwise brainwashed into false consciousness. So it’s an urgent moral imperative to smash it, and the resulting utopia will be easy and automatic, because that evil’s the only thing holding nirvana back.
2. Robustly True – Be extremely skeptical about all proposed changes, and especially those being pushed rapidly via coercive pressure by people who seem to be animated by the spirit of #1.
3. Selectively True. Two subtypes:
3.a. Selectively True of Convenience: It just so happens that when the subject is something I like about the status quo, I am quick and eager to trot out this ‘best conservative wisdom’ principle. And when it’s something I don’t like about the status quo, then I don’t mention it and instead start sounding a lot like type 1 above.
3.b. Selectively True By Principle and/or Empirical Test.
My point is that when you hear this line from a type-3 person, you are almost always dealing with a type 3.a, and hardly ever a 3.b.
Often you’ll be dealing with a 3.a. pretending to be a 3.b., deceiving his audience and/or himself, but again, its conveniently aligned with his preferences, agenda, or the broader zeitgeist.
So, for example, if you were to suddenly raise the topic of recent shifts is norms and laws related to sexuality, or to the subjects related to immigration, all of a sudden Mr. “Best Wisdom of Conservatism” would be saying, “Well, well, that’s different, see, and we can totally undo the status quo without worrying about it, or heeding the voices of objectors, and indeed we should be welcoming the increase in social justice and the unadulterated boon, because …”
Well said!
Wish you’d get back to blogging, btw. 🙂
Trump restrained seems laughable. Much more likely to operate by fiat where engaged and deems it necessary and let others do so where not. Clinton may operate technocratically, but it will be because there is no unified opposition position only pluralities that favor it and minorities that prefer to rail against it than form one.
Trump restrained seems *laughable*. Not just unlikely or improbable, but straight up ridiculous? For almost everything? Or just some things?
You sincerely think that the fact he has legit opposition in his own party, and a liberal media and establishment on 24/7 suicide watch isn’t a very plausible hindrance to achieving some grossly improper agenda?
Mitt Romney isn’t voting for him. George Will left the party. He doesn’t have a single endorsement from any major newspaper.
Do you think there is a single member of the Washington Press Corps voting for him?
If Trump farts out of turn, he will be threatened with impeachment.
By comparison, I saw a photo of the press on Hillary’s plane. The rapturous faces said it all! Andrea Mitchell was gazing tenderly ahead like she was at her daughter’s violin recital.
No, Hillary Clinton is not cautious. She is reckless, careless, incompetent and she thinks she can cover it up by lying.
Reread the sentence “I certainly would like….” I think it says the opposite of what you intend.
Trump is a blowhard narcissist — mostly hot air, and lewd “locker room talk”. He certainly would be constrained by Dems in gov’t.
Hillary is a criminal, deliberately dishonest and hypocritical both, as well as being quite nasty to women (see Dem treatment of Sarah Palin).
The Dem anti-American Leftists have been doing a Long March thru the institutions. Trump won’t be able to stop it, but might slow it down.
Hillary will make it faster, and possibly make it “too late” to change. Well, even in failing state Venezuela, it’s not yet “too late” for the vast majority of people, but they will suffer more before they change the gov’t and the gov’t policies.
” destroy everyone’s faith in government, in order that they would become receptive to libertarianism,” << I certainly want people to stop trusting the gov't. But is this about destroying faith, in people's minds, or it is actually destroying existing institutions? There will NOT be a police/ warlord free state.
The folk in Venezuela might well have lost their faith in gov't, but they continue to fear and respect the guns of the military. And in Somalia, without any "formal gov't", there are laws enforced by warlords' gangs.
The failure of the Libs to help Reps get vouchers for schools ensures that most avg folk will be educationally indoctrinated to have faith in gov't while being taught in a way to avoid learning about many virtues of America.
Those virtues are disappearing faster than ice in Antarctica, and the disappearance will accelerate with Hillary.
Your comment about pushing a button reminded me of this article by Murray Rothbard: https://mises.org/library/do-you-hate-state
Here’s the relevant part:
“The abolitionist is a “button pusher” who would blister his thumb pushing a button that would abolish the State immediately, if such a button existed.”
I guess you wouldn’t push the button. Neither would I. This article helped me clarify what was wrong with Rothbard’s views at a time when I accepted many of his claims but found some of them difficult to swallow. I had recently read “The Ethics of Liberty”, which had the same effect. I started to understand conservatives, and realize what they get right (British and American “conservatives”, at least).
Other books that helped: Hazlitt’s “The Foundations of Morality”, Mises’ claims about the relationship between justice and social cooperation, Hayek’s “Law, Legislation and Liberty”, Hoffer’s “True Believer”, and perhaps John Taylor Gatto’s books, even though I don’t know exactly why, since he doesn’t address the subject directly.