I've been bothered by this for a while now...figure I'll put it out there, now that it's been brought up recently by Kling here. How the heck are any conservatives even libertarian-leaning?
Aretae's typology says:
Libertarians want freedom.
Conservatives want to maintain the existing good.
Progressives want to help the weak.
There are no forces so corrosive of existing institutions as wealth and freedom. Liberty lets people try stuff that is outside the current boundaries of acceptable. Heck...liberty only matters at all when you're free to do stuff other folks don't like. And when folks find something that works, the kids will all start doing that...and the conservatives will all complain.
Worse (for conservatives)...capitalism destroys the notion of authority. There is no boss telling you what to do...there's only relationships where you trade for value...and the only reason you interact with institutions is for mutual gain. Also...free markets create change at rates unheard of away from free markets. AND for all wealthy people over all time, everywhere...wealth has been used primarily as a way to escape social norms. Capitalism creates wealth.
How the heck are any conservatives even moderately pro-freedom or pro-free market? Do they not see the (necessary) flow of events? Freedom and Freed Markets make for life getting real weird real fast...precisely the opposite of what conservatives are supposed to be about. It's probably why libertarianism was a leftist position back when the terms left & right were being invented.
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11 comments:
It may be that you're constrained by the limits of the Progressive-Conservative-Libertarian triangle. Steven Den Beste wrestled with this in 2003, and ended up writing a piece that you may find interesting.
Note that SDB is retired from political blogging, and that the piece is from 2003, so some of the links and references may be stale.
Joseph,
Thanks. Digesting the article.
Joseph,
I think it's reasonable to treat my triangular politics as a series of axes, rather than positions. If I'm parsed that way, I'm not far different from Den Beste. I might quibbble with his axes...because I don't think they capture the inner essentials of most positions. But certainly a multi-axis definition is more descriptive of the non-neurotypical than a single-axis definition.
I think you've painted a caricature of conservativism if you consider maintaining the existing good as contrary to wealth and freedom.
Isegoria,
Consider:
What happens when women get extreme wealth? Paris Hilton. Drew Barrymore. Kardashians. Wealth removes from women the requirement to act according to societal dictates. EITHER you say...well, shit, we're liable to have the average girl acting like Paris...and there's not a damn thing we're going to be able to do about it, because they'll be rich enough to escape our opprobrium... OR you say: we should constrain those girls...and the only realistic way of doing so is to constrain their wealth/freedom.
It's a logical consequence... albeit one that no one actually pays attention to.
Freedom is in the same boat. Historical sexual mores are built around the fact that sex leads to babies. Modern sex doesn't lead to babies unless (a) you want it to, or (b) you're stupid or negligent. Pretending that the freedom to have sex without making babies isn't going to completely upend the traditional sexual ethic is crazy.
Ditto every institution you can name. Wealth and freedom are deeply corrosive to keeping anything the way it is.
Conservatives want to maintain the good, and conservatives will embrace new things that are good.
The kids don't start doing new things because they work. Kids are happy to see destruction. Destruction is cool.
You're the one that tells us that 99.9% of new things will fail. Conservatives are just playing the odds.
It seems to me that conservatives will often line up with libertarians when the good things they are preserving are freedoms.
In a situation when the rules and regulations are constantly growing, where both commercial, social and private spheres are all under ever stricter control, then both the conservative and the libertarian impulses will be pulling in parallel.
Now I agree that in a world where freedom is growing they'll be opposed. The internet is such an area. But mostly, in 2011, they are not.
Two guesses -
1) you've noticed people who are partly conservative and partly libertarians, classified them as conservative, and wondered why they're libertarian
2) conservatives are libertarian when progressives are in power and making regulations
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LA,
I've been a libertarian for 25 years...and have been having trouble understanding, for at least 20 of that, why conservatives don't see that the actual effects of freedom & free markets aren't universally opposed by folks who are conservative.
I like Dr. Pat's explanation. Accidental allies for now, but if real freedom happens, we'll expect opposition.
Accidental allies for now.
But if groups are accidental allies for long enough, then Team Thinking kicks in, and people think "They are on my side, so what they say must be correct. I'll ignore that it doesn't actually line up with what I want."
c.f. the way many Progressive's supported the USSR for decades based on the way it was an ally against Nazi Germany and Tsarist Russia. This is despite the fact that for decades it was an autocratic oppressor itself.
What's the point of commonality between conservatism and libertarianism? Business interests.
Of course a libertarianism that was a cover for business interests would be a very compromised libertarianism. Hmmm....
For that matter a conservatism that was a cover for business interests would be a very compromised conservatism -- one that didn't mind too much about Paris Hilton, for instance.
Leave ideology to the fanatics, and think about interests.
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