Dove Defends Dove Against Hawk

Since Yglesias has graced us (again) by wading into a libertarian squabble, I should honor him with a reply:

Borders' argument seems to me to partake heavily of obscurantism. The metaethical topics he's trying to raise ("what are rights? where do they come from?") are frankly irrelevant.

The great big libertarian loophole for all arguments involves the invocation of rights and somehow I, not the naive libertarian, am engaging in obscurantism by challenging the strength of that most favored trump card. I can’t understand for a second how I keep being criticized as a “pop-philosopher” or an “obscurantist” merely because I question the most widely held and sorely neglected presupposition of the libertarian—especially when (in this case) it was not I who brought it up in the first place...

Making war is a massive deployment of the state's coercive force, both against the target population and (in order to acquire the necessary war-making resources) the war-making nation's home population. All ideological points-of-view represented in contemporary American society involve some skepticism about the advisability and/or morality of deployments of the state's coercive force. Libertarianism (in all its varieties) is all about taking this skepticism rather further than do other points of view. Since libertarians are skeptics about the use of the state's coercive force and war is a huge use of coercive force, libertarians ought to be skeptics about war.

Wow. I’m aghast at this logic, especially for one having audited Robert Nozick’s classes… Of course, libertarians are generally skeptical of state power—yes, even in war. No one is arguing that we shouldn’t be. But such skepticism, as a libertarian duty (poorly characterized by Yglesias or not) rarely sits in isolation. It is always accompanied by either the “rights” trump card, the “self-defense only” premise (which no libertarian bothers to question with respect to the question of “planning” and “resource conscription.”), or the “why should I have to pay for that?” reflex. It is this trinity of libertarian dogmas that is applied to many issues, whether or not they are suitable for the context in question. I feel I have a duty as a libertarian, not only to be skeptical of state power, but of the hackneyed arguments and “self-evident” premises of my fellows.

Borders' view -- roughly speaking that it's a good idea for the United States to launch wars against countries that have not attacked us and that do not threaten to attack us in the immediate future in order to affect a reconstruction of the prevailing social and political order in those countries -- does not evidence what one would call a great deal of skepticism about the use of the state's coercive force.

Wrong. Hussein, for example, vowed numerous times to exact revenge on the US—even if these were the fist-shaking rants of a defeated, demented dictator. He was also found to be uncompliant with the agreements he made after the first Gulf War in exchange for us to stop kicking his ass. ("Serious consequences" followed.) These reasons, mingled with a whole host of other reasons put together, provide enough justification to add to the best reason of all to invade Iraq—to begin implanting the DNA of liberal democracy and prosperity in a region that breeds terrorism in its absence.

That isn't to say that Borders' view of foreign policy is necessarily wrong (though I think it is, but that's another story) it's merely to point out that it's not much of a libertarian view.

True. Libertarians normally have very little useful to say about foreign policy. But that doesn’t make me un-libertarian. It makes libertarians not-so-foreign-policy-savvy... or worse, that libertarianism writ large doesn’t have a realistic foreign policy position to call its own—Cato’s stuff notwithstanding. (At least, that’s my opinion.)

Since my rights and freedoms are, in my libertarian mind, to be defended (in the broad sense, not the “there went the dirty bomb, so attack” sense), I expect my government to do so. And since government expenditure on national defense is still not as large as entitlement/welfare expenditures, antiwar libertarians are barking up the wrong tree as far as I'm concerned--especially since the welfare state is unjustified under libertarianism.

Now, If the response is “but at least the welfare state isn't killing people,” then we’re back to the argument about whether or not Iraqis have rights—which is, according to Yglesias, "irrelevant" and "obscurantist."

If the sort of thing he wants the US to do for Iraq is moral and feasible, then whatever premises have led him to that conclusion ought to lead him to rethink his skepticism about the morality and feasibility of state coercion at home. Which is to say that he shouldn't be a libertarian.

Sorry, Matthew. I will continue to count myself among them, if they will have me.  I hope my views don't get me excommunicated.

Comments

[Matt McIntosh]

I find these debates about what is or is not a "libertarian" position on issue X tiresome. I call myself a libertarian sometimes (though god knows some days I feel like disassociating myself from the term) because I find it the most expedient label for where most of my political beliefs happen to fall. When we're talking about self-identification, there are two kinds of people: ones who look at political problems and come to conclusions then pick a "sect" to join sides with based on that, and those who join a sect first and form their positions around its orthodoxy. Most of us start out as the latter of course, but being (or at least trying to be) the former is generally a sign of maturity. I really have no time for vertical rope-pissing exercises in trying to contort my foreign policy preferences into an orthodox framework. When the framework doesn't agree with me, I discard it. Really quite simple.

[[email protected]]

You get criticized as a obscurantist and as irrelevant because you keep raising your nutty brand of social contract theory as if anyone cares. Logan/Sager were having a perfectly nice exchange about what's going on in Iraq and whose predictions have been borne out.

Then Logan makes a reference to Nozick, and then suddenly you're off to the races with the claim that anyone who isn't American could be boiled alive and it wouldn't make a lick of moral difference to you.

And normally I wouldn't care, Matt, about who is a libertarian and who is not. But when Yglesias comes out as a stronger defender of liberty than someone who claims the libertarian political label, it's a bit odd, to say the least.

[[email protected]]

Simply because many libertarians don't say what you, Max Borders, want them to say about foreign policy, doesn't mean they aren't foreign policy savvy. It just means that many libertarians disagree with you about foreign policy.

What does it mean to say that "libertarianism writ large" (another rhetorical flourish of no meaning, can libertarianism be writ small?) doesn't have a foreign policy. Conservatism writ large doesn't have a foreign policy either. Nor does modern liberalism. Certain groups within those broad political perspectives have foreign policies, but to say that conservatism has a foreign policy is nonsensical. (Neocons even disagree amongst themselves, although have a more clearly formed foreign policy perspective because of the nature of that ideology.)

And, see, how when we actually get to the real world, Iraq and our present involvement there, your defense of invasion amounts to a single, throw-away sentence that's little more than a case of testosterone gone mad.

That's why you're irrelevant.

[Max]

If I'm irrelevant, phantom commenter, it seems strange that you've spent so much time on my comment box. You must be a very lonely creature.

[Tom]

Matt McIntosh says: "I really have no time for vertical rope-pissing exercises in trying to contort my foreign policy preferences into an orthodox framework. When the framework doesn't agree with me, I discard it. Really quite simple."
There's nothing especially orthodox about the foreign-policy preferences of "establishment" libertarian organizations (the Party, Cato, and Reason, for example). They simply have bigger soapboxes and larger bullhorns. And besides, foreign policy is only a small part of the libertarian framework, and Mr. Borders seems to like the larger framework, as do I. Aside from trying to make the argument that an agressive foreign and defense policy is in keeping with libertarian principles, I (for one) am doing my little bit to keep libertarianism from being dismissed as entirely irrelevant to public policy debates. For, that is surely one effect that the defeatist, isolationist wing of libertarianism is having on "mainstream" politicians. We libertarians aren't going to change the world by ourselves -- there are too few of us to do that. Nor are we going to have much influence on those who can change the world if we're written off as irrelevant kooks. That's where I'm coming from.