His article is behind a paywall, but worth the $2. My notes from it:

1. Progressives and Conservatives both focus on individual freedom. Progressives a bit more on equal positive liberty, conservatives more on negative liberty.

2. Both theorize as if all you need are the right social mechanisms, and free individuals will flourish.

3. But in fact, if you don’t start with responsible, virtuous individuals, social mechanisms will not work. The miracle of this country is not our institutions but that we have citizens “generally capable of using their freedom well.”

4. Liberation from outside coercion is a shortcut to liberty. The “long way,” which Levin is writing about, is what he calls “moral formation.”

5. Although our theory often points to unlimited liberty, our practice often involves traditional restraints. For example, traditional marriage remains popular, along with its constraints.

6. Religious institutions “command us to a mixture of responsibility, sympathy, lawfulness, and righteousness that align our wants with our duties.”

Ultimately, the piece is difficult to summarize. Using my own words, he seems to me to be making a case that virtue is important for the individual and for the community, and politics provides a false path to virtue. Instead, it is the individual, aided by the traditional institutions of family, work, and faith, who must struggle with the issue of virtue.

And, yes, this should provide reinforcement to those who view the world along the civilization vs. barbarism axis, without resonating so well with libertarians or progressives. But everyone should be able to appreciate the clarity of thought and the quality of writing.

I found it repetitive and unsatisfying. Thanks to Mark Perry for the pointer. I thought that the responses that were supposed to be conservative were left-wing stereotypes of conservative views. Not so much the other way. I thought that sometimes small wording nuances that they probably did not notice affected my answers. The difference between “most” and “every” was significant to me, but my guess is they chose those words more casually.

It called me a Business Conservative.

Business Conservatives generally are traditional small-government Republicans. Overwhelming percentages think that government is almost always wasteful and it does too much better left to businesses and individuals. Business Conservatives differ from Steadfast Conservatives in their positive attitudes toward business and in their strong support for Wall Street in particular. Most think that immigrants strengthen the country and take a positive view of U.S. global involvement. As a group, they are less socially conservative than Steadfast Conservatives.

I wonder if they have a libertarian category and I failed to make it there. Otherwise, what they call business conservative may be the closest thing you can get to libertarian within the confines of the survey.

I think that the three-axis model is better. Some people did not care for the quiz in The Three Languages of Politics, but I think it was actually a better quiz than what the Pew people came up with.

A reader writes,

I think Ferguson is a great illustration of your 3 axis model. Would love to read a post of your’s discussing that.

I have been on vacation with only sporadic skimming of news. All I know is that a black resident was shot by a white policeman, and some rioting has ensued. The three-axis model would predict:

–progressives would view the black resident as representing an oppressed class. They would be critical of society’s unjust inequality and racism.

–conservatives would view rioters as representing barbarism. They would be critical of anyone they think encourages rioting.

–libertarians would view the police as representing coercion. They would be critical of police who act as if the unlimited use of force is their prerogative.

Again, I have only been skimming the news. Is that actually how views have been falling out?

Suppose you are fighting barbarians. When firing at them would endanger civilians, you are reluctant to fire. What incentives does this create?

In a long article about controversies about rape at Swarthmore College, Simon van Zuylen-Wood writes,

The second central remnant of the school’s Quaker legacy — the “peaceful resolution of conflicts” — resides not in the student body, but in the administration. “From the very smallest scale to the largest scale, the college does have a long history of finding a way through that won’t leave half the people in any room feeling like they lost,” says Swarthmore history professor Tim Burke. “It means, for one, we tend to defer difficult decisions.”

My remarks.

1. I do not think that the Quaker tradition has anything to do with it. The passivity of college administrators is everywhere. They are passive when it comes to alcohol abuse. (I wish I had saved the email sent to parents by the President of Muhlenberg several years ago, with its helpless hand-wringing over the fact that more than a dozen students had been hospitalized with alcohol poisoning during the first semester. I wrote back saying that I could make a few suggestions to the admission office that would probably suffice to solve the problem.) They are passive when it comes to students exercising a heckler’s veto of speakers. They are passive when it comes to anti-semitism.

2. The article made me wonder how there came to be an overlap between “casual sex about which I felt ambivalent” and “rape.” It seems to me that one ought to be able to draw a reasonably clear line between the two.

3. Colleges seem to want to be separate jurisdictions in which ordinary laws do not apply. They do not want their students to be arrested and prosecuted for vandalism, violations of drug laws, or rape. Instead, they prefer their own judicial processes.

4. How does this issue play out along the three axes? Suppose that along the oppressor-oppressed axis you think women are oppressed with regard to sex. In that case, it might seem reasonable to believe that women are entitled to casual sex and also to later claim that casual sex about which they felt ambivalent was rape. Along the freedom vs. coercion axis, I think you would support colleges that want to apply their own laws and judicial processes, and let students and parents choose colleges knowing what the rules are.

But it turns out that my views on the issue are more along the civilization vs. barbarism axis.

–I think that what is missing from college is the concept of punishment. I think you have to decide whether students are adults or children, and punish accordingly. If you treat students as adults, then you put them through the legal system. If you treat them as children, then you limit their privileges.

–If students are exempt from adult law enforcement, then colleges should reinstate what used to be called “parietal rules.” No sex, no drinking, no drugs. On the other hand, if students are adults, then they ought to face adult consequences.

–If I were a school administrator, I would put students into the “adult” category, and I would tell students and parents to expect that treatment. I would only have a campus judicial process for academic issues, not for issues involving alcohol or sex. That means allowing local police to patrol campus and enforce laws. If drunk students are arrested for disorderly conduct and vandalism, so be it. If students face the same risk of drug prosecution that someone faces off campus, so be it. If they can be charged with rape and convicted in court, so be it. I certainly would not discourage victims from pressing charges. On that note, Heather MacDonald writes,

But the main reason “survivors” don’t demand to bring their cases to criminal court is that they know that what they have experienced is something far more complex and compromised than criminal sexual assault, almost invariably involving mixed signals, ambiguity, and a large degree of voluntary behavior on their part.

That is certainly the impression that I took away from the Swarthmore article. If I were an administrator, I would not try to set up the college as the official arbiter of such cases.

–When a sexual advance becomes too persistent or aggressive, I would encourage the victim to be very assertive, to the point of screaming “rape” rather than giving in. You are entitled to your body and your personal space, and that deserves priority over protecting the other person’s feelings.

–Colleges go out of their way to make condoms available (e.g., resident assistants must keep them in a candy jar for students to be able to access) and to ensure that students know how to use them. I would say do the same thing with rape whistles.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle has similar thoughts:

If students are adults, and the college is not supposed to be in charge of their sex lives, then the correct place to adjudicate sexual crimes is in the courts, not the campus judiciary system.

With Cato’s Aaron Powell and Trevor Burrus. I think it was an interesting, free-wheeling discussion. How does it compare with the popular talk I did with Russ Roberts on the same book?