Libertarians Do It Laissez-Faire

Robert Locke has an article in The American Conservative deigning libertarianism “Marxism of the Right.”

While conservatives may view the article as the long awaited, valiant answer to Atlas Shrugged fans, and libertarians may view it as the regurgitated tripe of a myopic blowhard, I instead see in this article the possibility of a marvelous taxonomic venture.

From my admittedly biased reading, Mr. Locke has gone out of his way to include a member of every genus of logical fallacy. Not only is the reader provided with commonly seen ad hominems, but also an encyclopedic collection of exotic and rarely seen strawmen, and strange species of circular reasoning. Here, one can spot a non sequitur quietly slithering through the paragraphs, there, a gaggle of post hocs, and even lovely begging-of-the-questions, in full plumage no less! And several varieties of outright strange points.

This opportunity for classification is surely too good to pass up. Fallacy-watchers, open your nature books.

Flitting about as the first line, no less, the reader can catch a glimpse of this magnificent creature, the enchanting Blue-Beaked Ad Hominem:

Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism…

Ah yes, the old saw about pot and sodomy, so relevant to the validity of a political ideology (and Heaven forbid our philosophy should attract “the ambitious”). Well, if we’re going to be judged by gross generalizations of the company we keep, perhaps it’s only fair to return the ruling. Religious fundamentalists, ex-Klan members, creationist country bumpkins, homophobes, and lousy American Conservative columnists often find an attractive political philosophy in conservatism.

Within a paragraph, another nervous Ad Hominem has approached the feeder, this time a lost baby:

There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most)…

Catallarchy readers, your strait jackets are in the mail. Nozick’s lucky he died before we could find an asylum that would take him.

Joined in short by its brother:

Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions.

An intense and surely accurate survey of the libertarian population asserted without a single reference.

Ah, the father Ad Hom, joining its roost!

And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults…

Almost as egregious a sin as treating adults like children, which has been the conservative philosophy to date. But speaking of outright idiocy…

What’s this, fallacy-watchers? Binoculars up! It’s a flock of Southern Black-Winged False Premises, returning from their northern migration. Let’s watch.

Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs.

I imagine someone as aged as Locke could believe there’s no difference between allowing people the freedom to choose something and approving of that choice—but I don’t think it’s likely.

Incidentally, is there some kind of legal limit currently in force on the amount of sex I can have? If so, I better slow down.

If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism.

Not that I imagine it matters to Mr. Locke at this point (we are three paragraphs into his article), but nothing in libertarianism necessitates acting selfishly. In fact, one can probably find at this very libertarian blog, on this very libertarian page, no less, writers lauding private charity.

Perhaps pertinent is the fact that economists postulate an incentive of rational self-interest to explain behavior—not rational-altruism.

Or as David Friedman put it: libertarianism allows for collectivism, it does not require it. Mr. Locke’s conservatopia does.

Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation.

Which is why libertarians never refer to economic theory, or Hong Kong, or Iceland, or the failure of collectivist empires.

Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics.

Which is why we, unlike the Marxists, actually made sure we understood the subject before we reduced everything to it.

…[L]ike Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.

Which is why Micha and I go out every weekend looking for hoboes to shoot.

Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it.

An interesting argument, considering most libertarians believe politicians choose to screw us over, and yet seldom find any goodness in the act.

Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual.

Only if you believe that no individual will choose to act for the collective good—but if that’s true, how does one propose to make them vote that way?

Ah, zee majestic and rare Red-Tailed Strawman Argument. Let us watch its elegant approach:

The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simply: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life.

Gosh, you wouldn’t know it from Bush’s preaching about the Middle East. Collateral damage be damned: freedom by executive fiat!

To be fair, all libertarians do believe freedom is the only important thing. Most of us will often skip meals and instead eat big warm servings of freedom. This is why so many of us are so skinny. And dead.

A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk way from with ease or justice.

Do Away With The Traditional Family! was in fact the runner up for best libertarian slogan. (The winner was of course the now famous: Libertarians Do It Laissez-Faire.)

Knowing that few libertarians want to do away with the cherished familial unit, Mr. Locke assumes that libertarianism must be a contradictory philosophy; he fails to entertain the possibility that libertarianism does not entail the absolute prioritization of freedom that Mr. Locke thinks it does. Of course, it’s the libertarians who are wrong about the implications of libertarianism, not Mr. Locke.

No sooner have the Strawmen taken their fill, but a pair of rambunctious young Post Hocs come bounding out of the nearby bushes:

And if libertarians ever do acquire power, we may expect a farrago of bizarre policies. Many support abolition of government-issued money in favor of that minted by private banks. But this has already been tried, in various epochs, and doesn’t lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable shaking-out. Many other libertarian schemes similarly founder on the empirical record.

Yes, and let’s not forget the conservative record—for instance, the glorious utopia of state-sponsored religion that was the Spanish Inquisition. Or the brilliant interventionist success that was Vietnam.

Mr. Locke would apparently prefer that the government have a monopoly on “fraud and currency debasement.”

A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a naïve view of economics that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme.

Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, for instance, are two libertarian economists who refused to read anything published after 1863. (Milton thought old paper smelled better, and Hayek—well, "Nutty Hayek" they used to call him).

Moreover, what a ridiculously bad post hoc ergo propter hoc. Japan is regulated, therefore regulation is good. Nazis urinated, therefore all who urinate are Nazis.

A squawk in the sky, and then a timid Australian Fine Feathered Fallacy appears in the sky, chasing its own tail and making a lazy circle:

While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes.

It is decent to limit freedom. How do we know? Because decent societies limit freedom.

And what outing would be complete without spotting a herd of the Long Toothed Outright Weird?

… [L]ibertarianism is an all-or-nothing proposition: if society continues to protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred.

Not sure what category this fits into as yet. A newly discovered species perhaps. The argument, I believe, is that if we were to say people are allowed to use drugs, then people would use drugs because they knew that if they lost their jobs from drug use, then they’d be able to get unemployment compensation. But such reasoning does not a good argument make—it is clear that the government does buffer us against some personal failures, but it is by no means true that it buffers against all: presumably, the drug user still gets good and fired, libertarian society or no.

The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one.

As opposed to the warm and welcoming bosom of conservatopia, where if you puff a joint or snort some coke, we’ll lock you in a little hole, or, barring that, elect you President.

Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving.

This is different from any other political philosophy how? Is it not true that believing one political philosophy is true entails believing the alternatives false? Or is Mr. Locke willing to admit that both conservatism and libertarianism are true? In which case, wherefore this dribble?

And how exactly are we to be free to opt out of the conservative imposition of society, “with all its attendant pluses and minuses,” short of leaving?

Begged Questions flock to the brook:

Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?

Yes, and what if an asteroid smashes into conservatopia, eradicating not only bacteria, but even Sean Hannity? What if the conservative forces of government don’t properly mix altruism and selfishness? What if they curtail domestic liberties and implement an authoritarian state? What if Bill Frist crowns himself Emperor of the Tri-State Area?

And a lonely Striped Non Sequitur rustles through the nearby grass:

Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments.

Of course. And, empirically mind you, most people want agricultural subsidies, tariffs, and massive amounts of pork barrel spending (they also want Presidents fellated in the Oval Office).

What a glorious parade of exotic arguments.

What absolute piffle.

Conservatives should stick to what they’re good at: having abysmally boring missionary-style-sex with Korean prostitutes while their middle-aged botox-ridden wives are out shopping. The reality-based community is a little too busy (too "ambitious") to play with them at the moment.

UPDATE:
Somebody pointed out in the commentary to this post that I committed many of the same fallacies as Locke in my fisking.

I do not deny it. When Locke grants libertarians the courtesy of addressing their strongest arguments, and not simply the ridiculous strawmen that make up whatever he defines as "street" libertarianism, then we will be happy to defend ourselves in kind. Until then, people like me will instead use his attacks as podiums for our own metaphor-laced brand of immature humor. Those who want more are encouraged to ignore my postings, and--please--create your own.

I'll fight fire with fire, and--correspondingly--I'm more than willing to fight shit with shit.