New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | February 24, 2006

As Francis Fukayama bids adieu to neoconservatism, Julian Sanchez considers how the movement's unconstrained vision has turned the right into the left.

Comments

|2.24.06 @ 4:50PM|#

I guess Fukayama's article is what it looks like when an intellectual rat flees a philosophical ship?

|2.24.06 @ 5:09PM|#

A big shout-out to Julian for his application of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, a very insightful book that I'd recommend to anybody and everybody here.

At the very least, it helps explain why "people who don't agree with me" aren't necessarily retards or dicks, but holders of an internally logically consistent, but different, worldview. (Also, it was written earlier in Sowell's career when he seemed less grumpy than he is now.)

|2.24.06 @ 6:22PM|#

I guess I'm shocked, Stevo, by the notion that people don't understand that concept inherently, and need to read a book for such a realization. What a bunch of dicks.

|2.24.06 @ 6:27PM|#

Why so grumpy trainwreck it's Friday.

|2.24.06 @ 6:33PM|#

Because the dickwad in the office next to me likes to listen to CD's of "A Prarie Home Companion" constantly. My tastes run more towards Black Flag.


BTW Julian that's the best analysis of Bush's Jesus-is-my-philosopher comment EVER.

|2.24.06 @ 7:00PM|#

So many of the "neo-cons" are former lefties, why is anyone surprised that they are reverting to type?

|2.24.06 @ 7:05PM|#

Someone once said that a neocon was an old liberal for whom the center had moved to the left. Works for me...

|2.24.06 @ 7:22PM|#

Neocons are, like Monty Python's Inspector Leopard of the Yard, "the same [as liberals], only....MORE VIOLENT!!!" http://www.pythonland.com/episode29.php

|2.24.06 @ 7:27PM|#

Because the dickwad in the office next to me likes to listen to CD's of "A Prarie Home Companion" constantly.

I feel your pain.

brian423|2.24.06 @ 7:47PM|#

If you like A Conflict of Visions, you'll also like The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker.

|2.24.06 @ 8:26PM|#

trainwreck and Stevo-

I haven't read Sowell's book, but from time to time I've read his columns. He occasionally discusses the "vision of the annointed." He may not see liberals as retards or dicks, but he certainly sees them as adherents of a very crazy and arrogant philosophy that has no connection to the real world. He, of course, is simply a humble and honest person with a clear view of the world.

I don't claim to have any answers as to why Americans divide so consistently and repeatedly into the same old factions, but I have yet to find anybody else's answers all that satisfactory. Jason Ligon's views on the subject make more sense to me than any other views that I've encountered, but even then I'm skeptical. Mostly because everybody else is so confident in their preferred explanations, and I find their explanations flawed. So why should I be confident in my preferred explanation?

As far as Julian's article, I liked it!

|2.24.06 @ 8:33PM|#

trainwreck, you gotta rise above...

|2.24.06 @ 9:21PM|#

thoreau,

That argument is exactly why I am less than confident in my Lutheran upbringing. All of the people in the world who are religious think their religion is the "correct" religion. Why do they believe that? Because they were raised that way, not because they reasoned it out. It is pretty arrogant to think your religion must be correct because you were effectively born into it.

kgsam|2.24.06 @ 9:33PM|#

Sowell was a Marxist in his youth.

|2.24.06 @ 9:34PM|#

CD's of "A Prairie Home Companion"

That means Garrison Keillor singing, and that means I'M CHANGING THE STATION RIGHT NOW.

|2.24.06 @ 9:41PM|#

brian423,

I hate _The Blank Slate_. I actually am favorable to Pinker's worldview, but his arguments are full of holes and his representation of his opponent's arguments are unfair. Reading Pinker is like reading Gould. I strongly suspect they both knew when they were spouting but just didn't respect their audience enough to care.

thoreau,

Sowell has many books. They're much better than his columns. I don't think Sowell's earlier books are better per-se, but they tend to be less repetitive and better edited. As such, it may make sense to read an early one first. I've plugged _Knowledge and Decisions_ before, and I'll do so now. Read it. You'll like it. It's from 1980 so you don't get the ranting against liberals that apparently _The Vision of the Anointed_ is laced with (I say apparently, because I haven't read it and it's not particularly high on my reading list). That does make the crime section a little dated, but the rest holds up well.

BTW, If you read Sowell, you might not view divisions quite as statically as the phrase "same old factions" imply. I may be inferring too much from too few of your words, in which case perhaps you have a much more dynamic view. If not, after reading Sowell, you probably will.

|2.24.06 @ 9:52PM|#

It now seems clear that many of the neoconservative thinkers who supported the Iraq war as a vehicle for democracy promotion decided to focus on the threat of weapons of mass destruction precisely because they concluded the broader public would not accept the deployment of American troops in the service of an abstract-sounding end.

Regarding those neoconservative thinkers, I suspect they were right. I can point to a thread from yesteryear where suggesting that the American public wouldn't support a war on such principles alone provoked an "instalanche", with all the associated fun. I don't think this point has yet set to in with much of the neocon lay support.

I would add the obvious, that the American public not supporting the deployment of troops for an abstract end is an excellent example of "the implicit wisdom of our evolved traditions". Yep, the ol' only-in-self-defense meme's got somethin' about it, something tried and tested, something that screams out, "Caution!"

|2.24.06 @ 10:04PM|#

From the NYT article: But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naive Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world.

The worst part about this is that Bush & the Bush League Policy Players have helped to discredit any kind of principled foreign policy going forward. The pragmatic "realists" a la Kissinger will be able to point to Iraq as a warning against any kind of idealism, dewy eyed or not.

The same people who had us back the Shah, Saddam Hussein, and sundry Central American, Asian, and African tyrants because they were "anti-communist" will likely have us tred down that road again.

The Bushies put democracy ahead of individual rights, (gee, wonder why they would take that viewpoint) and they wind up promoting democracies where the first thing people vote for is to remove the rights of others.

I can't help but believe that the administration folks who planned Iraq were aware that Mussolini and Hitler came to power by election. They had to know what happened when Yugoslavia, a nation of several different "ethnicities" and religions, held together by force, fell violently apart when there was no longer the internal means to keep it violently together. How could they possibly believe democracy, in and of itself, would be the balm that solves the internal problems of a very divided state?

|2.24.06 @ 10:11PM|#

But it is the worst features of the unconstrained vision--its hubris, its pretense to omnicompetence--that have taken hold of the right.

Excellent piece, Mr. Sanchez!

...and I hope you won't mind if I use "pretense to omnicompetence" over and over again?

The "pretense to omnicompetence"--it's what's behind central planning and the attempt to remake the culture of the Muslim world. Now, all you liberals, go crawl back under your rocks, and give me back my Grand Ol' Party!

|2.24.06 @ 10:21PM|#

thoreau, Thomas Sowell's columns are a lot more polemic and partisan than his early books, at least the ones I've read. (Aside from a few of his books that are actually collections of his columns, like Pink and Brown People.)

The columns are probably more polemical on purpose. Much of the audience for his columns would probably get bored reading books like A Conflict of Visions or Economics and Politics of Race or Preferential Policies, which are generally more scholarly in tone. I read those in the late 1980s.

I don't think I've read any of his books after 1990 or so. From what I've heard, they seem more polemical, and even the titles (The Vision of the Annointed)reflect that.

Maybe from writing his columns, he has learned that writing with a bit more of a pugnacious bite will sell to more people, and he has started applying that more to his books. Or possibly his publisher pushed him in that direction.

As I recall, when I read Economics and Politics of Race or Preferential Policies, I quickly got a sense of, "God, these race-based policies are certainly effing stupid," but he pretty much let the data speak for themselves. By the time I read A Conflict of Visions I already knew where Sowell's sympathies lay, but I recall that the book itself -- that book in particular -- is pretty even-handed.

|2.24.06 @ 10:45PM|#

anon2-

I didn't mean to imply that society and political factions haven't changed. My use of the phrase "same old factions" referred to the way that if I know what a person thinks about, say, gun control I can guess (with much better than 50% accuracy) what that person thinks about the war in Iraq, gun control, and tax cuts. (And yes, I know, these issues aren't actually binary, but you can still approximate it as yes/no and get a reasonably good prediction.)

We can take any two of those issues and explain how they're connected if we try hard enough. But all 4? What's the connection?

Now, it's worth noting that we libertarians tend to have predictable stances on at least 3 of those 4 issues, but our stances tend not to fall into the same neat boxes that most other Americans fall into. We analyze the domestic issues through a different lens than most Americans. And while people on this forum may be sharply divided over Iraq, the very fact that we are divided is significant: Outside of libertarian circles, if you show me a bunch of people who agree amongst themselves on taxes, guns, and gays I can almost guarantee that the group has a consensus concerning Iraq. Or at least they did in 2003.

I have heard all sorts of theories about why this is, and I have my own suspicions, shared by many others, but I'm not sure that we're right.

|2.24.06 @ 10:48PM|#

CORRECTION:

I meant to say that if you know what a person thinks about gun control you can guess what that person thinks about gay marriage, tax cuts, and Iraq.

|2.25.06 @ 4:57AM|#

Stevo Darkly,

You don't have to read Sowell to understand that; hell read a far more insightful and interesting authors like Umberto Eco or Steven Pinker to understand that.

______________________________

...movement's unconstrained vision has turned the right into the left.

It appears that even at a libertarian blog we can't get away from the left v. right false dichotomy.

amazingdrx|2.25.06 @ 5:02AM|#

(Have a Powdermilk Biscuit wreck. Hehey.)

Kinda convenient for these writers to forget about corporatism in this wonderful repudiation of the many neorat failures.

The whole so-called philososphy of neoconmen was merely a smokescreen to cover up (multi) national corporatism.

Follow the money. Neoconmen are all military industrial lobbyists and think tank scum who constantly pay lipservice to corporatism. When they aren't appointed to brief criminal careers in government.

This is about empire, multinational corporate empire, and the death of nation states as we know them.

They will do what other empires could not do by using a corporate structure to build the empire out across the globe. Bankrupting governments (starting with the US government) as they go, making governnents mere figureheads and handing all power to corporatism.

The contractors with america shall set the people of these United Corporate States of Earth free with gaaaawd's own freedom.

Free to be cannon fodder, consumers, and cheap labor for the glorious empire based on the wonderful principles of discount democracy, it's for sale at rock bottom prices. Because free speech (=bribery)dictates that government is for sale. And is very cheap!

Oh yeah and before there were neocons they were the "Skip" Jackson military indistrial lobbying wing of the democratic party.

|2.25.06 @ 5:06AM|#

brian243,

Ahh, you beat me partly to the punch.

anon2,

Sowell's books are largely efforts in card-stacking and that is all. To someone who is uninitiated in the historical epochs that he delves into they may seem profound, but they aren't.

|2.25.06 @ 5:21AM|#

Hakluyt, is there anything you don't claim to know better than everyone else??

|2.25.06 @ 5:28AM|#

Daniel,

When I actually make such a claim you can ask me that question, until then...

|2.25.06 @ 5:39AM|#

Daniel,

BTW, if you read and thought more you might feel less intimidated.

|2.25.06 @ 6:24AM|#

amazingdrx, wasn't that "Scoop" Jackson?

I think you're thinking of Skip Bayless. clueless ESPN columnist.

|2.25.06 @ 8:58AM|#

the curfew in iraq is to prevent people from going to the mosques.

|2.25.06 @ 9:51AM|#

Hakluyt, in the interest of literalism and accuracy, I'll rephrase Daniel's question for you:

Will we ever have a topic of discussion of which you are incapable of acting as though you know more about that topic than everyone else?

|2.25.06 @ 10:16AM|#

thoreau

Your (I think, somewhat self-congratulatory) post has provoked some random thoughts in me:

A.) "libertarians" - self-described, and answering to some kind of sensible description of that label - generally strike me, and MOST people, as being MORE ideologically "pure" than other Americans involved in policy debates�and this is often a quality touted as a virtue among them - the perceived "consistency".

This consistency is - I believe - less pertinent than a lot of the kind of adolesents drawn to it may believe.
Sure, there is a similarity between choosing to have a case of root beer in your basement and choosing to stock a case of hand-grenades - both are exercises in personal choice - but there are obvious dis-similarities also�so what?
And an advocate of gun control, or drug prohibition, believes the dis-similarities in certain kinds of choices out-weighs the general presumption favoring personal freedom (shared by most Americans of any political persuasion) and it is not - to me, anyway - obviously foolish that he might think so. It is a departure from a purely abstract consistency�so?

(That people can disagree over where you would place the line isn't necessarily a problem either - that's what makes politics, and horse races.)

Most self-described libertarians over the age of twenty have probably come to terms with this�inwardly. Outwardly, they don't get called on it very often - mostly, because nobody besides a guilty conscience is paying that much attention. There is also a debating advantage squandered when you forswear cheap "slippery slope" arguments. Probably too, a kind of Peter Pan Syndrome - an unwillingness to completey grow up into a Republican conservative.

But how many adult libertarians actually believe in marketing heroin like beer, or permitting a private stash of nuclear weapons? Not very many, I would guess. I suspect most mature libertarians don't hold much for completely unregulated stock markets or land use. I suspect most haven't seriously thought about the ideal immigration policy, either. The distance from here to there soothes a lot of intellectual uneasiness, I would guess.

LP candidates often compromise in the sense that they propose a Minimum Agenda�but they are unwilling to "split the difference" in the same sense mainstream parties will. For example: even in Holland it is seriously illegal to be a major drug trafficer - but LP candidates routinely run on a promise of releasing ALL non-violent drug offenders�even a guy named Pablo, from Cartagena, who was caught cruising into the Port of Miami pilotting a freighter full of 20 tons of pure cocaine. Now that is just de facto legalisation, and a public that opposes legalisation of hard drugs by pluralities of 95% won't stand for it (and shouldn't).

Usually, the LP candidate has so little chance it scarce matters, however. But is is honest?

More to follow�

|2.25.06 @ 10:24AM|#

Actually, I agree that the left-right dichotomy gets stretched to the breaking point and is really only vaguely useful. For instance, I remember a rather resounding debate here and at Michael Totten's web site over whether the Nazis were on the "left" or on the "right". In the end, no one was convinced, because neither term really has a firm definition, especially at different points in time.

Virginia Postrel popularized the idea that the real divide is between "stasists" and "dynamists". I think that rather oversimplifies things, too, but it is an instructive way of analyzing political leanings.

I don't suppose we'll get rid of one-dimensional political classifications any time soon--they're too convenient--but a better way in my mind is to use a two-dimensional or even three-dimensional classification. Witness the chart used for the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" and its various permutations (not to suggest that that test isn't biased to make most everyone a libertarian)--it uses classifications like "Centrist", "Libertarian", "Left", "Right", and "Statist". Again, not a complete picture, but an improvement over the strict left-right viewpoint. Note that on this chart, libertarians are above left and right :) Maybe a similar chart using an additional dimension of stasist vs. dynamist would be instructive?

|2.25.06 @ 10:30AM|#

Andrew-

I didn't say anything about the superiority of our ideological approach. I didn't say anything to suggest that it's better to march in lock-step with an ideology. If anything, I'm just as skeptical of our predictability as I am of anybody else's predictability. I regularly add to my posts some rather sarcastic remarks about ideological purity. I usually tack on disclaimers about "Yes, yes, I know, ideally this issue would be all about blah-blah-blah, but since we live in the real world...." I didn't say a word against compromise in any of my posts in this thread.

All I talked about was why people so consistently fall into one of two camps. I'm not talking about people who join a camp as a compromise, who vote for a candidate that they disagree with on some issues because they agree with him on the issues that matter most. I'm cool with that. Rather, I was talking about the way that I can predict what a person thinks about taxes, gays, and Iraq once I know what that person thinks about guns.

A person who compromises his vote is fine. But a person who goes further and compromises his mind bothers me. If you mostly care about issue X and you vote for the party that agrees with you on X, even though you disagree with them on Y and Z, that's cool. But I'm bothered by the people who join the hive mind and agree with the party on every issue that comes along. They seem to be pretty common.

Everybody has their theory on why that is, and I have my own theory as well. I'm just not sure that I'm right.

I don't know how that constitutes self congratulation or a critique of compromise.

|2.25.06 @ 10:38AM|#

biologist,

Will we ever have a topic of discussion of which you are incapable of acting as though you know more about that topic than everyone else?

In light of the fact that I don't put my $0.02 into the majority of conversations here, yours is a ludicrous question that can best be described as an attempt to troll me. There happen to be a few topics where I have a deep knowledge set and I comment on them; if that bothers you, so be it. I personally chalk it up to jealousy on your part. But please, quit acting like I hold forth on every topic discussed on this blog, because I simply do not.

Andrew,

If thoreau is anything, he is a self-righteous prick.

|2.25.06 @ 10:40AM|#

biologist,

Anyway, so much for literalism or accuracy on your part.

|2.25.06 @ 10:42AM|#

biologist/Daniel,

Now, if you have something substantive to say about my comments, go for it. Of course I doubt that is the case, given your style of attack to date.

|2.25.06 @ 11:13AM|#

Hakluyt:

I was not posing the question myself, I was rephrasing Daniel's question for comprehensibility in light of your commitment to literalism, i.e. your response to Daniel's initial question.

Considering that you just referred to thoreau as a "self-righteous prick", then decried Daniel's and my "style of attack", I'd say this is a fine example of the pot calling the kettle black. It is true that you don't post comments on the majority of threads here. It is my opinion that you wish others to accept your assertions (on topics which you choose to comment on) at face value without explanation, although you are happy to give out reading assignments. Sometimes the reading suggestions are helpful, sometimes annoying, sometimes both.

Something substantive about your comments:
nothing really. I'm often impressed at what you seem to know, but not especially intimidated or jealous. Your willingness to launch ad hominem attacks speaks more to who lacks confidence (or perhaps patience). I have my own knowledge set, and it's of topics more important to me than history, sociology, political theory, etc. Those topics I am knowledgeable of don't come up here often, save when IDers and creationists make the news, or Ronald Bailey writes a column.

|2.25.06 @ 11:34AM|#

thoreau,

As far as I can tell, you can use one question to get an approximation for people's answers to the other three by using it to pick which of the two major parties the person answering the question sympathizes with. As such, the answer to what they all have in common is the Democrat or Republican position on them. Surely you know that, so there must be more to what you're looking for than what you've stated. I can think of a few questions you might be asking and the answer to some of them may be that humans have evolved to be social animals. Historically, it's been much more important to be a member of a group, even if the group is wrong about some things, than it is to be outside all groups.

Look at how various religions come into being, who believes them, what they believe and what their children and grandchilren believe. You'll see the same pattern there, and it's even more pronounced than in the political sphere. If you believe in God, then there's always "well, that's the way God made it", but if you are looking for a scientific explanation, everything points towards a combination of genetic and cultural evolution.

Hakluyt,

Perhaps people misunderstood your comment about Sowell. They probably don't know enough about the historical epochs covered in_Applied Economics_,_Basic Economics_,_Classical Economics Reconsidered_, _The Einstein Syndrome_, _Late-Talking Children_,_Knowledge and Decisions_ or _A Personal Odyssey_ to be able to summarize them with only a couple of sentences without looking like a blowhard; hence they're jealous.

|2.25.06 @ 12:16PM|#

biologist,

It is my opinion that you wish others to accept your assertions (on topics which you choose to comment on) at face value without explanation, although you are happy to give out reading assignments.

Oh come now. Its either I provide too much information in my comments or I don't provide enough. After a while there is simply no pleasing you people. Pick a standard complaint and quit your whining.

Your willingness to launch ad hominem attacks speaks more to who lacks confidence (or perhaps patience).

Yes, as in this instance when I started out with an ad hominem attack. Oh wait, I didn't. It was cretins like you and Daniel who attacked me.

anon2,

Given that most of his works on history are derivitive ones, that is, he does no original research at all, but instead mines the works of others in fields he barely if at all understands. This naturally leads to card-stacking on his part. As a mere example I need only point to his misuse of John Thornton's Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World.

amazingdrx|2.25.06 @ 12:25PM|#

Skip, scoop, scooter.. hard to keep these names straight. You're all doin' a heckuva job bushies.

|2.25.06 @ 12:35PM|#

Venomous as his tone is, the Amazing Dr. X has hit on an important point, one that Fukayama doesn't touch on and that goes directly to SmokingPenguin's important question, "How could they possibly believe democracy, in and of itself, would be the balm that solves the internal problems of a very divided state?"

The neoconservative vision of "democracy," at least in its Bushie formulation, doesn't seem to have very much to do with actual democracy. Instead, they seem to use the word to refer to a Straussian rule by the elite, in which the demos is a mob whose role in governance is to lend their name to the policies of their betters. Conflating crony-capitalist corporatism with free market democracy is just one example of this.

Would supporters of democracy have backed the coups agains the elected presidents of Haiti and Venezuela? Would supporters of democracy have based their post-war vision for Iraqi politics on flying Ahmed Chalabi into the country?

If we take the people's uprisings in Russia during the anti-Gorbachev coup, or the Orange Revolution, or the protests in Tiennamin Square, as models of how democratic revolutions work, the stage managed toppling of the Saddam statue by the US Marines - so carefully choreographed to resemble an actual movement by the People but actually a bit of theater by the ruling class means to manipulate the people - is the neoconservative analogue to them.

It is indeed a shame that these fundamentally anti-democratic rogues have so thoroughly blackened the term "democracy promotion."

|2.25.06 @ 12:58PM|#

After a while you get the feeling that Sowell is sort of an "rockstar" like figure for conversatives because he "dares" to say "politically incorrect" things. That doesn't really speak to his scholarship though.

|2.25.06 @ 12:59PM|#

thoreau

(more�I promised)

Another problem I have with libertarian "consistency" is�it isn't.

Of course, there have always been the purist debates between Anarchists and Limited-Government versions (and versions of the latter that split over obligations to the State, like taxation)�but that is easily resolved in that fact that everyone would march for some considerable distance toward a MORE limited government.

(Curiously, this is LESS of a difference with Conservatives. They too would have a much more limited government - and across a broad front, not merely on certain single issues�can you say as much for liberals?
And presumably some culture conservatives would feel comfortable living in a small town, or a tribe, where cultural mores were enforces casually�at least in principle.)

But I really mean something else:

First, a bunch of single issues. Is there really a libertarian position on abortion, or capital punishment? Or are there rather various positions, hinging on exactly the same considerations that vex liberals and conservatives (self-described)? A more recent case might be gay marriage.

Most libertarians may default to Blue-State preferences in the matter�but is this a compusion of logical consistency, or a choice?

The issue of abortion swings on whether you believe a fetus is a life - something ALL political philosophies wrestle with - and what you believe the obligations of the State are to rescue defenceless life. Even an anarchist would have to ask whether he has a moral right to lift his spear to defend an unborn fetus in the same sense as he undoubtedly would to defend a woman from a gang-rape or an old man from a violent robbery.

The case for same-sex marriage similarly hinges on whether "equal treatment" is being applied to equals�and dis-establishing marriage would solve the problem, but there's little reason to EXTEND the marrige provision meanwhile- I oppose any kind of wage and hours legislation, but I'm certainly not indifferent to whether the minimum wage is high or low, whether overtime kicks in at forty, or thirty, hours. I am not a fan of adding national holidays to please pressure groups, either.

Secondly, there are a bunch of "seperationist" issues�mostly having to do with religion. Libertarians self-described, may come down heavily on one side of this, but I'm not convinced this is much more than bigotry. If the local court decided to display a statue of (say) Augustus Caeser - because he was a great "law-giver", or something - and local Christians objected because they found the choice distasteful, I would tell the Christians to fuck themselves. Why would I care more about the Ten Commandments?
Likewise, if gay activists wanted the courthouse painted pink, and others felt pink was gauche, why shouldn't the relevant majority prevail? In San Francisco the courthouse might be pink. It wouldn't do to say "no color".

Anarchists get off the hook, but every Limited Government libertarian has to face it. It is not obvious to me, anyway, why libertarians would stick up for the "right" of Hare Krishnas and Scientologists to buttonhole airport commuters.

Thirdly, and related to the second, are a bunch of process issues.

One half of this only applies to Limited Government libertarians�a bunch of stuff about Executive Privledge (fuck my spelling!) and Congressional priority, States Rights and such.
But does libertarianism, as a political philosophy, only apply to the American form of government? And is there a necessary "libertarian" position on, say, the judicial filibuster?

The other half is a bunch of civil liberties/criminal rights stuff. Maybe it's just me, but I find it hard to detect a "libertarian" default. Certainly a limited government libertarian believes there is SOME obligation by the state to expedite criminal and civil justice? And sets limits somewhere. Just like everybody else. Libertarians are distinquished by temperment�nothing else.

Anarchists aren't quite off the hook - one must ask where you have a moral right to proceed against a neighbor you SUSPECT has committed a crime.

Finally there is ALL of foreign policy�briefly, any position along the spectrum from rabid interventionism (and multilateralism) to forms of isolationism bordering on pacifism seem compatible with tenets that would otherwise be incontestably "libertarian".

Geez�the above is a big chunk of America's political debate! And libertarians - in principle, and to some degree, in practice - disagree amonst themselves. What is left is government intervention in the economy, and the politics of race and gender preferences.

Interesting - where libertarians most commonly disagree with conservatives, and (perhaps) agree with SOME liberals, they are most apt to disagree among themselves. Where libertarians overlap conservatives, and necessarily distinguish themselves from ANY self-described liberal, they are most consistent among themselves.

Go figure?

|2.25.06 @ 1:02PM|#

Instead, they seem to use the word to refer to a Straussian rule by the elite, in which the demos is a mob whose role in governance is to lend their name to the policies of their betters.

For the benefit of those short on time, I've quoted the unsupported assertion on which joe's post rests, so you don't bother to read the invalid conclusions that follow.

|2.25.06 @ 1:04PM|#

Surely you know that, so there must be more to what you're looking for than what you've stated. I can think of a few questions you might be asking and the answer to some of them may be that humans have evolved to be social animals. Historically, it's been much more important to be a member of a group, even if the group is wrong about some things, than it is to be outside all groups.

anon2-

I agree. The issue I was trying to get at is why there aren't more people who say "I vote for [insert party here] because the issues that matter the most to me are [insert issues here] even though I disagree with them on [insert other issues here]." I think it's easier for people to mold their opinions to fit the group, rather than maintain their own opinions while supporting the group as the lesser evil.

I can tell myself that I am above all that, but I'm skeptical enough to suspect that my opinions have evolved at least somewhat in response to identity. If I am at all above that sort of thing, it's only because I've picked a small, unusual group that I already agree with on a bunch of things, hence requiring fewer adjustments to fit in.

So, I suspect that tribalism is the best explanation for why the same people tend to line up on the same side on so many issues. This differs from theories that there are two common ways of looking at the world: Sowell's notion of traditionalists vs. the "vision of the annointed", or Virginia Postrel's notion of dynamists vs. stasists, or joe's idea that it's about support for existing power structures vs. the desire to uproot power structures. Those ideas may provide approximate descriptions for the two coalitions on a number of issues, but when ideology conflicts with tribal loyalty, tribal loyalty almost always wins. And when a member of the tribe misbehaves, the other members of the tribe almost invariably excuse it, even though they would go apeshit if the other tribe did it.

Some may see this explanation as rather obvious, but many others (including many on this forum) argue that it's all about philosophies and ideas. But I agree with anon2 and Jason Ligon: It's about tribalism, first and foremost.

|2.25.06 @ 1:05PM|#

The thing is, even though I just outlined a stance above, I'm still not sure that I'm right. Everybody else has a theory about why people line up the way they do, and I find most of those theories unsatisfactory. So maybe I'm just as full of it as they are.

|2.25.06 @ 1:13PM|#

Andrew-

OK, so maybe libertarians, as a group, do indeed have more overlap with conservatives. And maybe we aren't as logically rigorous as we like to claim. Valid points to consider.

I get the impression, however, that there's something you wanted to take me to task for. Or at least there was in your first post.

I'm just not sure what it is that you want to take me to task for, beyond the fact that I don't always vote for conservatives.

|2.25.06 @ 1:14PM|#

thoreau,

I dunno. It seems to me that your basic problem is that you are trying to come up with one singular factor.

|2.25.06 @ 1:21PM|#

Hakluyt,

In an previous thread you said:

"Its interesting you bring up Conquest and Cultures. Its a book I am familiar with. I realized that it was full of shoddy workmanship when Sowell quoted John Kelly Thornton's Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800. Either Sowell didn't read the book or he's prone to fabrication because his statements about the book's conclusions conflict with what Thornton actually writes."

So, I'm assuming that you're talking about _Conquests and Cultures_ again.

I skimmed the endnotes and see _Africa and Africans..._ cited eight times in chapter 3 of _C&C_. They endnote numbers are 15, 35, 38, 52, 78, 96, 362 and 367. I've never read _Africa and Africans..._, but I don't mind getting a copy to compare Sowell's citations with the book. However, to save me a bit of time, can you tell me your complaints in specific?

|2.25.06 @ 1:22PM|#

Except for the toppled statue example, the Ahmed Chalabi example, the Haiti example, and the Venezueal example, Josh is right about my statement regarding the role of the People in neoconservative "democracy" being unsupported.

|2.25.06 @ 1:27PM|#

But hey, Josh, any time you'd care to provide counterexamples showing Bushies or neoconservatives striving to incorporate bottom-up, democratic popular governance as the driving force of politics, and subordinating themselves and their own policy/partisan preferences to those of the People they obsensibly wan to empower, I'm all ears.

Yep, any time now we'll start seeing your examples of neoconservatives and Bushies treating the public at large as full partners in government who have the right to shape their society's future as they best see fit, without regard to the neocons' pre-existing agendas.

Any time now.

|2.25.06 @ 1:43PM|#

Would supporters of democracy have backed the coups agains the elected presidents of Haiti and Venezuela? Would supporters of democracy have based their post-war vision for Iraqi politics on flying Ahmed Chalabi into the country?

In the case of both Haiti and Venezuela, we had elected presidents who took their elections to mean, "I get to crush my opponents and guarantee myself and my cronies lifetime jobs." In those circumstances, supporters of genuine democracies may find grounds for supporting coup attempts. The Chalabi support was dumb, but I think it was grounded more in Ahmed's skillful self-promotion and the neocons' capacity for self-delusion than in any evil corporatist scheme.

If we take the people's uprisings in Russia during the anti-Gorbachev coup, or the Orange Revolution, or the protests in Tiennamin Square, as models of how democratic revolutions work, the stage managed toppling of the Saddam statue by the US Marines - so carefully choreographed to resemble an actual movement by the People but actually a bit of theater by the ruling class means to manipulate the people - is the neoconservative analogue to them.

Given that Russia is rapidly sliding back into authoritariansim, the Tiennamin Square protests were ruthlessly crushed with no apparent harm to the Chinese gerontocracy and the Orange Revolution is in danger of dissolving into partisan bickering, it's not clear that the "spontaneous" version of democratic revolutions work much better than the stage-managed variety.

The neocons are certainly guilty of 1) a naive conceit that democracy will spontaneously spring forth from all peoples when repressive regimes are removed, and 2) that said democracies will instinctively back Western social, political and economic interests. Then again, most leftist political thinkers I've read are guilty of the same modes of thought, so I don't see any real philosophical differences here other than the usual pro forma pro- and anti-capitalist rhetoric.

|2.25.06 @ 2:39PM|#

Here's some more thoreau!

Why do so many self-described libertarians tweak their politique toward Blue State preferences?

Insofar as this is sincere, there are two answers:

One is, that it IS sincere�which is (mostly) to say it is a matter of self-selection. If you are persuaded of free market economics, and otherwise comfortable with the small-town, yester-year values of the red states, it is really rather easier to describe yourself as a conservative, and involve yourself with the intellectual and activist world of self-styled conservatives.

For one thing, you get immediate access to a political movement with rather more "throw-weight" than the libertarians, as such, will ever have! And the self-described "conservative" movement is a comfortably broad tent. There are plenty of pro-choice conservatives, plenty of seperationists�the Open Borders position has the support of most of the American business community.

Conservatives DO take free-market issues seriously: John Derbyshire is a war-sceptic, among others, who is welcome in the company of conservatives - Pat Buchanan is long gone, not because he is an isolationist, but because he's a protectionist.

But is you are a Blue-Stater (by preference, rather than location) you are going to have many of the preferences cited in my above post. The trouble is, when you start confusing these happenstance preferences with the Dogma of the Church of Libertarianism, rather than the one-off - but perfectly reasonable - points of view which they actually are.

I guess it's a sincere position�but maybe perverse. I remember when I was first becoming interested in libertarianism in the 70's, and hearing an evolved Rothbardian claim that both Humphrey and McGovern were (slightly) better candidates than Nixon. I recall reducing him to silence by asking whether he could have voted for Johnson, had LBJ elected to run in 68.
HH and McGovern are one thing�Kerry and Hillary, rather less IMO.

I suppose a single issue could catapault you one way or another. Maybe abortion, although a lot of folks seemed OK with Reagan. Maybe the War�but I don't remember any Democrats who stopped being Democrats, or any liberals who stopped being liberals, when they split with LBJ over a much more divisive war. Hell�I don't recall any Democrats or liberals giving up on Kerry, when he was pro-war every other day!

Apart from an actual preference for the Democrat (or Green, SWP, whatever) candidate there are some (hokey) libertarian political "strategies". Mostly it's divided government.
I have some sympathy for this position�but find it hard to apply. I don't vote for all of congress - just two Senators, and one Rep. Even if I felt sure of how the congressional races would go nationwide, I would hesitate to risk tipping either house against my ideological preference, just to keep the government divided. Even more with my presidential vote.
thireau, I find it difficult to believe thatshould the house tilt democratic in 06 you would campaign for Pat Robertson or Pat Buchanan - opposed by, say, Gov. Richardson of NM - PARTICULARLY IF YOU THOUGHT THEY HAD ANY REAL CHANCE TO WIN - just to keep the government "divided".

More later�

|2.25.06 @ 2:53PM|#

OK, OK, I'll learn to stop worrying and love the GOP. I don't know what that has to do with any of the points that I and others were making, but OK. I'll become a cheerleader if it makes you happy.

Dubya, Dubya, he's our man!
If he can't cut spending, nobody can!

Give me a G! G!
Give me an O! O!
Give me a P! P!
What's the spell? G-O-P!!!!

Go team! Go team! Go team!

Four legs good! Two legs better!
Four legs good! Two legs better!

Two! Four! Six! Eight!
Who will we eviscerate?
Emmanuel Goldstein!

Give me a B! B!
Give me a U! U!
Give me an S! S!
Give me an H! H!
What's that spell?
F-E-A-R-L-E-S-S L-E-A-D-E-R!

b-psycho|2.25.06 @ 2:55PM|#

Actually in a way it sounds to me like Andrew is saying there's no such thing as a "libertarian" because of the amount of disagreements within the ranks of self-described ones. One would think he has a point....until you realize that applies to EVERY political group outside of rabid single-issue types.

Of course no two "libertarians" think alike. No two liberals, conservatives, centrists, etcetera think the same either. When it seems like they do, you're listening to the ones that don't actually think moreso than they REACT. An overarching philosophical starting point is often the only similarity people within a camp actually have, it's all chaos from there if they really follow it.

IMO, this whole issue of who's really what they say actually proves a vital point that libertarians need to do a better job of emphasizing: politics doesn't seriously address jack shit. In popular politics, labels ending up more important than actual thought is a feature, not a bug, and it's a reason to tear it down.

|2.25.06 @ 2:56PM|#

Anybody wanna bet that Dave W. will think I was serious in my previous post? At one point he accused me of loving the eternal warfare state simply because I said that I agree with R C Dean on something.

Maybe Dave W. and Andrew should argue with each other, each one pretending to be me:

thoreau in Andrew's head: "I love Noam Chomsky! Viking Moose, will you lend me the blow up doll?"

thoreau in Dave W.'s head: "I hate Chomsky! Corporations should be able to do whatever they want without any consequences whatsoever no matter how many people are killed by guns that fire when gently bumped!"

b-psycho|2.25.06 @ 3:00PM|#

Apparently Andrew posted while I was still typing. Now it looks like I'm referring to something he probably already explained, eh...

*shuts his mouth & reads*

|2.25.06 @ 4:08PM|#

Conservatives DO take free-market issues seriously: John Derbyshire is a war-sceptic, among others, who is welcome in the company of conservatives - Pat Buchanan is long gone, not because he is an isolationist, but because he's a protectionist.

Buchanan's "out" because he came out against the war on, essentially, isolationist grounds. The conservative betrayal of free market principles first became clear to me during the Clinton Administration in regards to China. Just because free marketers aren't comfortable in the land of labor unions doesn't mean they're comfortable in the GOP.

"The question is: What action? My answer would be, has always been: Attack them, smash up their assets, kill their leaders if you can, cripple their military. Then leave them in rubble and chaos. They're not going to be making any nukes in that condition. Mission accomplished. That was what I hoped we would do to Iraq, and why I supported the war."

----John Derbyshire

It looks like he's skeptical of the prospect of remaking Iraq in the image of a liberal democracy, but, almost inexplicably, he seems to have been against the occupation--he just wanted to leave them in a pile of rubble! ...If that's what qualifies as a "war-sceptic" in your universe, then where do people who were against the war because, among other reasons, they thought the creation of a liberal state in Iraq, perhaps, an impossible task? ...Are they traitors?

You seem to see what you want to see. I'm an ol' school Ronald Reagan Republican, and what I mean by that is that I want to slash government spending dramatically, I want to cut income taxes dramatically, I want free trade--unilateral if necessary, and I want a pragmatic foreign policy. And I don't see how the GOP, right now, is working to further any of those things. Regardless of what you want to see, I don't see any reason to support them.

|2.25.06 @ 4:20PM|#

Ken-

I also want the things that you listed, and I think we'd both agree that we'd like to see a less powerful executive branch and greater respect for the Bill of Rights. I know that the Dems won't give us much in that regard, but the GOP certainly isn't giving us that either. Oh, the GOP has some people who say nice things about our goals, but what, exactly, do those people accomplish?

Since I have no illusions about either party, and no illusions that the LP will accomplish much beyond perhaps cutting budgets in a few local offices, where does that leave us? To Andrew, it means that we should show full and constant loyalty to the party that writes us the prettier love poems. To me, it means that I should be, well, independent: I vote for good mavericks when I find them, sometimes I vote third party to send a message, sometimes I hold my nose and vote for a lesser evil, and sometimes I hold my nose and vote for gridlock.

I don't claim that anybody else should do what I do. But it seems like a way to blend principles and pragmatism, and maintain more self-respect than I could maintain if I simple stopped worrying and learned to love a major party.

|2.25.06 @ 4:24PM|#

BTW, Jason Ligon and I have talked about this a lot. I know he takes the tactic of pretty much always voting for the people who are better on his key issues. I respect that. He has identified the compromises that he's willing to make and he makes them. But he doesn't show up and try to sell me any snake oil, he doesn't try to explain away every mistake, he doesn't keep insisting that I'm deluded. He simply identifies the compromises that he's willing to make, and makes them.

That's honesty. I respect honesty.

|2.25.06 @ 5:36PM|#

thoreau

Ah, I'll have some fun - I hope you take everything below as merely good-natured sarcasm�something you're always up for, I'm told.

There are some insincere reasons for tweaking libertarianism toward Blue State liberalism:

One is niche-marketing. Libertarianism as a political movement in contemporary North America is small industry - albeit tiny - with sundry for-profit and non-profit entrepreneurs�exactly like the entrepreneurs (called "activists") among conservatives and liberals. The market slice for this particular philosophy is found overwhelmingly among high school and college students (and even there it represents a minority view, to say the least). As soon as kids leave school they'r apt to adopt a real political philosophy - either interest-group liberalism, or social conservatism - to the extent they feel the need for one (not much).
The "bundling" of Blue-State hot-button issues with free-market economics is mostly a matter of packaging I think - for reasons I should think are obvious. You are more likely to keep the cute girl at your table listening, launching at the military-industrial complex, as opposed to say, the teacher's union�you''ll get along better with your teachers, too.

Another reason is careerism. For the entrepreneurs - the pundits - libertarianism is like a start-up software firm - you're REALLY hoping to be bought by Micro-soft. A libertarian pundit wants a job with salon.com, or the LA Times�am I wrong? And for this season, anyway, Bush-bashing is how you get there.

I guess moral cowardice can be a factor. Face it thoreau, if you tell your colleagues you voted for Kerry, for some screw-ball "divided government" reason, they are going to feel that at heart you're a pretty nice guy�and they wouldn't have cared if you said you voted for Kerry because you are in contact with an off-world civilisation! If you were from some place like West Virginia, and said you voted for Kerry because the Lord so moved you�they'd be delighted! - they eat that shit up, when it comes from Jimmy Carter.

But how do you explain a thoughtful decision to vote for Bush, among people who would place an action like that as "beyond speaking terms"?

Voting for the LP, or most other 3rd parties, or the occasional blue state RINO - might get you off the hook. But Bush�let's face it - you would have to forgo the good will of people whom you might otherwise find rewarding, in every sense.

thoreau�I have a fantasy that you DID vote for Bush�and told everyone you didn't.

thoreau - you have an impression that I believe you are PC brainwashed. Mostly that isn't so�although I do expect that a blue-stater does subconsciously acquire a set of Pavlovian reflexes, such that he no more needs to be exposed to a notion like "Same-Sex Marriage" for the first time ever, before "Of course!" is out of his mouth in advance of any kind of deliberative process.

But - in my less charitable moments - I can suspect you are a kind of get-along guy:

"Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them--or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society--owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity--to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life...And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain."

Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenin

I do hope you take the above in the jocular spirit it was intended, thoreau.

If this segues with the main point of this thread, it is maybe a long digression on the futility of ascribing the worst motives to political actors you disagree with. The discourse is about the principle, right? Anything else is a circular firing squad.

If I was in Cairo - or Milan - and someone asked if I thought the Bush-Cheney-Rove axis of neo-cons were zionist-imperialist conspirators, and I was a war skeptic - I would attempt to explain that the policy of the current administration is exactly as Dr. Rice says it is�to spread majority rule and freedom of expression to parts of the world that do not currently enjoy them. I might demur, in that I thought the policy was over-reaching and even perversely contrary to purpose, but as a patriot, a citizen and (in my best moments) a statesman I guess I would want to express the administration's point of view on its own terms.

After all�conspiracy-mongering only lowers the level of political discourse - and that serves nothing.

|2.25.06 @ 6:20PM|#

To Andrew, it means that we should show full and constant loyalty to the party that writes us the prettier love poems. To me, it means that I should be, well, independent: I vote for good mavericks when I find them, sometimes I vote third party to send a message, sometimes I hold my nose and vote for a lesser evil, and sometimes I hold my nose and vote for gridlock.

For some, it's almost like they're rooting for their college football team, but it goes even deeper than that. ...For them being Republican speaks to identity--that's why I call them "Cultural Identity" Republicans.

For such people, party identification has little to do with the facts as they present themselves, rational arguments, etc., although in the case of Second Amendment rights, for example, the facts, rational arguments, etc. are related. My understanding is that the single most predictable factor for predicting a person's party identification is the party identification of the subject's parents. I suspect Libertarians are made up of a disproprtionate number of those who rejected an inheretied identification that way...

...but there are a lot of people out there who believe things and identify with causes for reasons that have little to do with facts and reason. ...and some of them stray onto this board. Although I'd always identified as a Libertarian Republican, I think that's what happened to me. ...people kept poiting out that the Republicans weren't living up to the advertising and, eventually, I had to choose to either face the facts or carry on, willfully, as a dupe or a hack.

You're right to go about popping people's bubbles, but people don't always react to an identity crisis the way we'd like them to. I've popped a bubble or two around here myself, and some of these guys 'll end up hating you for it--chasing you around from thread to thread, etc. ...but some of 'em may come around, eventually, if they can just find it in themselves to compare the world around them, honestly, to the advertising and their expectations.

|2.25.06 @ 6:33PM|#

Thoreau,

Take a look at the following quote from the Wikipedia piece I linked above:

"In order to make the internal functioning of a culture possible, certain basic rules and meanings underlying its production are generally ("When did you stop beating your wife?") cannot be contested (unlike the literal meaning or denotation) without contesting the situation of communication itself (you can answer "I never stopped" but not "I never beat her" unless you call the other a liar), the doxa of a given culture cannot be contested (thereby making it explicit, while its efficiency lies in its implicitness) without contesting the self-evident legitimacy of the culture and its producers."

...and compare it to the description of Derbyshire above as a "war-sceptic". I wonder. ...if Pat Buchanan came out against sending all legal immigrants back to their original countries, would a certain anti-immigration someone we both know think of him as pro-immigrant?

|2.25.06 @ 7:50PM|#

Ever since Sowell wrote, "Conflict of Visions," I have had the feeling he is onto something.
However, to my delicate neurons, the word, "unconstrained" will always be a circuit-breaker.
If someone could go through this thread and remove all the "unconstrained's," and just generally translate, these thoughts could be a best seller, not to mention very helpful to the Reasonoid Vestal Virgin philosophy.

|2.25.06 @ 9:38PM|#

I think the article is simply wrong and self contradictory. Not planning adequately isn't a liberal sin, not planning adequately is a libertarian sin.

The Bushies apparently believe devoutly in the libertarian/free market fantasy that good things will happen if the government will just allow them to happen. Hence they didn't bother to put in enough troops in Iraq or worry about the consequences of their actions, such as firing the entire Iraq army or allowing torture of Iraqi prisoners. Apparently they simply thought that since they were self evidently right and on the side of all good, that only good things could follow from whatever they did.

We saw the same thing in Katrina as well, where the Bushies all sat on their butts (and strummed guitars) and thought that someone else was taking care of things. And we see it in their economic program, which consists mainly of tax breaks for wealthy which are supposed to automatically generate prosperity (and which so far haven't done any such thing).

Liberals are all too willing to take active responsiblity. The far lefties have shown they are far too willing. But on the libertarian side, the impulse is to be lazy and irresponsible, and this describes the Bush administration to a tee.

James Anderson Merritt|2.25.06 @ 9:51PM|#

I have to admit to being very wrong about something. For years, GOPers have lured libertarians away from the LP by saying, "work for change from the inside ... you can remake the GOP in a libertarian image." The gulled libertarians would jump ship, bang their heads against the brick wall that was the entrenched GOP leadership, and either become one with the pod people or burn out, abandoning politics altogether. Some would come come back to the LP, but they seemed changed, cowed somehow: by no means hopeful that their third-party involvement would ever amount to anything. I supposed they judged it better than abandoning politics altogether, or swimming in the GOP slime-pit they had just escaped.

So I grew smug, thinking of the GOP lure as a siren song: a bright, shiny lie. Just about the time I was completely comfortable in my view, along came the Neocons -- chameleon marxists! -- to do exactly what I was confident libertarians could never do: hijack the GOP and use it as a means of seizing the levers of power of the world's only remaining superpower.

Hats off to them. I was wrong, it could be done, but apparently only by those who sought to grasp and wield power. The little libertarian Frodos who abandoned the LP shire on a mission to toss the One Ring into the volcanic cauldron, were not in the same league, it seems. I'm laughing now.

I must also laugh at those who feared that the LP would be hijacked by opportunistic outsiders (whether slick-talking "conservatives" or shape-shifting liberals), much as the Reform Party had been, several years ago. Who would have thought that the GOP would fall before the LP would? (Or maybe the LP did fall, and now it's just me and all you Zombies. :-))

I have lately seen Mr. Fukayama described as "neolibertarian." Having taken over and devoured the GOP from the inside, can we now expect neocon rats to jump from the sinking Republican ship to the little LP raft? I hear rats taste like chicken.

|2.25.06 @ 10:53PM|#

I just want to get post #69 in this thread.

|2.26.06 @ 2:21AM|#

I think the article is simply wrong and self contradictory. Not planning adequately isn't a liberal sin, not planning adequately is a libertarian sin.

The Bushies apparently believe devoutly in the libertarian/free market fantasy that good things will happen if the government will just allow them to happen.

It is statements like this that make me wonder why lefties even bother believing in evolution through natural selection. That or they really just don't understand how it works or what it implys in a godless universe.

|2.26.06 @ 3:18AM|#

The Bushies apparently believe devoutly in the libertarian/free market fantasy that good things will happen if the government will just allow them to happen.

Ha!

The above is funny in a totally divorced from reality kind of way.

More succinctly, "If only!"

|2.26.06 @ 3:53AM|#

Hey I just had an idea: With the liberal/conservative musical chairs going on right now, is this our chance to take back the word "liberal"?

|2.26.06 @ 4:37AM|#

Julian:

Leo Strauss... borrowed from the unconstrained vision the belief in the importance of an anointed few who were capable of facing hard realities and steering society for its own benefit.

And as has been pointed out by real, libertarian oriented conservatives; this fave philosopher of the neocons had no compunctions concerning the anointed few utilizing deception.

It now seems clear that many of the neoconservative thinkers who supported the Iraq war as a vehicle for democracy promotion, decided to focus on the threat of weapons of mass destruction precisely because they concluded the broader public would not accept the deployment of American troops in the service of an abstract-sounding end.

Julian puts it graciously. Following Straussian advice; the neocons lied cuz they needed to. But to the extent that they did stress democracy promotion, they appear to have engaged in more deception since, as just one example, real political autonomy for Palestine is something that the neocons strongly oppose.

|2.26.06 @ 4:58AM|#

Julian makes interesting observayions concerning the points of two Sowell books as a critique of neoconservatism. An "other side of the coin" exposition is presented in Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decision where he, like Hayek, demonstrates there are many aspects of society that can be understood and explained only through the use of invisible hand explanations. This volume is a look at the dynamics of the economic liberty that we call capitalism.

|2.26.06 @ 5:42AM|#

as just one example, real political autonomy for Palestine is something that the neocons strongly oppose.

so hamas political win is a feature and not a bug?

paronoia will destroy ya

Anyway from all you guys jumping around and masterbation you missed the most interesting part which is this:

Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time. "The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States.

Aside from that piece of crap he wrote about the need for a UN of bioethics enforcement I have to say I still like Francis.

|2.26.06 @ 5:57AM|#

yeah i can't leave this subject for some reason...there is this arguement i have heard elsewhere not just from fukiyama in which this myhtos in the 30s produced the neocons and they originated from the comunist left...of course these origianl neo-cons are dead and the new neo cons actually came to the conservative camp as conservatives but reading and studing under the neo-con camp...in reality can these people be called neo-cons? i am pretty sure the 1930's predates wolfowitz by about 20 years.

If a political movement has its origins in the rejection of an older movement and a whole generation change occures can we really say the neo-cons are former comunists?

Take libertarianism...it has its origins in the 70's or some such mythilogical bullshit...but all of which really has nothing to do with my history that brought me into the libertarian fold...which to be honest has more to do with the simpsons and Richard Dawkins and a conversation I had with my father when I was 15 in mexico then to do with rand or san francisco counter culture emerging from the haze of the 70s.

|2.26.06 @ 6:13AM|#

The concept of unintended consequences of government actions has advanced political analysis. However, Fukuyama's parting with neoconservatism would have been more cogent had he incorporated a different concept as well. The more that this concept is utilized, the better to ascertain political truth. I refer to the concept of: Intended but hidden and unspoken consequences.

Fukuyama:

The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan

But Fukuyama ignores some critical history. In "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", a plan for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's new government written by a group headed by Richard Perle in 1996 which included Kristol and Robert Kagan and other prominent neocons; we find that Baghdad is depicted as the lynch pin in the undermining of both Iran and Syria for the good of the Israeli State. After A Clean Break the neocons started a campaign to put forth those goals laid for the Israeli government as something America must do in its own interest. Fabrication and exaggeration of Saddam's WMD capacity were part of this campaign.

"Only ground forces can remove Saddam and his regime from power and open the way for a new post-Saddam Iraq." PNAC founder Kristol wrote in a 1997 report. Kristol's Weekly Standard magazine is owned by News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Fox News

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/011604Leopold/011604leopold.html

In 1998, a group of neos including Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol and four other neocons who wound up on the Bush team wrote a letter to Clinton urging him to take out Saddam. Incredibly, right after 9/11, Wolfowitz argued that Afghanistan be put on the back burner and Iraq be attacked instead!

Fukuyama:

His assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Richard Perle, was denounced as the "prince of darkness" for this uncompromising, hard-line position

Richard Perle, the man at the nexus of so many of the neocon "pro democracy" organizations, while he worked for Sen. "Scoop" Jackson in 1970, was caught on a NSA wiretap giving classified information to the Israeli Embassy.

http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html

|2.26.06 @ 6:31AM|#

Fukuyama:

What is initially universal is...the desire to live in a modern, that is, technologically advanced and prosperous ? society

And that requires a society that has a large amount of individual liberty.

Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time.

"Liberal" here, must be understood as "more libertarian", with limits to what the democratic majority can do to the minority. Also there wil be those who desire liberty, and others who desire democracy as a way to legally steal.

|2.26.06 @ 6:43AM|#

Fukuyama:

The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism... The misjudgment was based in part on the massive failure of the American intelligence community to correctly assess the state of Iraq's W.M.D. programs before the war. Overestimation of this threat was then used to justify the elevation of preventive war to the centerpiece of a new security strategy

The man is bitchen confused here. The neocons do purposely overate it, but Iraq was never a seat of radical Islamism. Sadam brutally persecuted radical Islamists. And it wasn't a case of the neos overestimation of the WMD threat. It was a case of deliberate deception.

|2.26.06 @ 7:09AM|#

...To be clear, I should put it this way:

"The more that this concept is utilized, the better to ascertain political truth. I refer to the concept of: Intended, *as in actually hoped for,* but hidden and unspoken consequences."

|2.26.06 @ 7:10AM|#

anon2,

If you have Sowell's text you can see the claims that Sowell makes about Thornton's book. IMHO he completely discounts Thornton's scholarship because it doesn't marry up with his hypothesis regarding the nature of the Atlantic world, and in doing so he does a very real disservice to Thornton's fascinating work.

If someone is interested in Sowell's line of argument in that text they'd do themselves far more good reading Toynbee than Sowell, since Sowell IMHO is writing nothing that other authors (like Toynbee) haven't already written. That's not surprising since Sowell isn't a historian - he's an economist. I mean, I suppose if you want history distilled from secondary sources that's fine, but it is not what I call scholarship nor is it especially illuminating.

BTW, its not as if I am the only person who has taken him to task for this: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_1998_Dec/ai_53260550

|2.26.06 @ 7:17AM|#

anon2,

IMHO, it seems that Sowell himself cannot see past his own "conflict of visions" and that's why his scholarship is so poor at least in the area of history.

|2.26.06 @ 8:51AM|#

"A big shout-out to Julian for his application of Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions, a very insightful book that I'd recommend to anybody and everybody here."

Kind of ironic then that Sowell has been rah-rah-ing Bush's Iraq war since day one.

|2.26.06 @ 9:25AM|#

Stevo Darkly,

Its a fairly flawed text actually.

|2.26.06 @ 9:50AM|#

Julian Sanchez,

The problem is that Sowell's typology is screwed up. Indeed, Sowell is at least as susceptible to criticism about his inconsistent views on "tradition" as Burke is.

|2.26.06 @ 1:16PM|#

Hakluyt,

I have a copy of each of Sowell's culture trilogy: _Race and Culture_, _Migrations and Cultures_ and _Conquests and Cultures_. Due to your previous post ("Its [sic] interesting you bring up Conquest and Cultures... Either Sowell didn't read the book or he's prone to fabrication..."), I'm assuming C&C is the book you're talking about in this thread. I've provided you with all the endnotes that I saw that referred to _Africa and Africans..._, but I don't have a digital copy of C&C so I may have missed an endnote, or there may be a place in C&C where A&A is mentioned but not cited. So, with those caveats in mind, what follows is a revised list of citations of A&A in C&C, this time including the page numbers of A&A cited in C&C. The format is endnote number (all endnotes are from chapter 3 of C&C) a colon and then the pages of A&A cited.

• 2: 15-16
• 35: 18
• 38: 19
• 52: 104-105
• 78: 107-112
• 96: 37-39
• 362: Chapter 7
• 367: 223-229

I have looked at the text in C&C that the citation applies to and I have not seen any "claims that Sowell makes about Thornton's book." Since citation 362 appears to encompass the largest portion of A&A, here is the text surrounding that citation:

... Particular cultural groups from Europe tended to cluster together in highly localized communities throughout the Wester Hemisphere,[361] while Africans on a given plantation were often from culturally diverse areas of Africa and were forced by circumstances, as well as by the whites in charge, to acquire the language of the country in which they now found themselves. Because there were some common denominators among the cultures of West Africa,[362] where most of the slaves in the Western Hemisphere originated, the cultural contrast between the situation of blacks and whites in the New World cannot be carried to extremes, but it was a contrast nonetheless. ...

Where does Sowell make a claim about Thornton's book?

|2.26.06 @ 2:47PM|#

For 30 years now, conservatives and libertarians have been telling us that the 'government that governs best governs least.' And we've been told that all attempts at planning can only end in diaster and unintentioned consequences.

The Bushies tossed the troops in Iraq and hoped for the best. Four years later, they're still hoping for the best. How is that not following the best principles of libertarianism?

b-psycho|2.26.06 @ 3:16PM|#

Gee Nerdman, could it be because attacking people that did nothing to you violates those principles?

|2.26.06 @ 3:26PM|#

How is that not following the best principles of libertarianism?

Cuz it was tax funded and was not necessary for our defense.

But maybe nerdman is just kidding us...

|2.26.06 @ 3:27PM|#

Maybe the invasion violated libertarianism, but the way Bush has fought the war seems to be the libertarian style all the way.

For four years now, our troops have been killed at a rate of about two per day. Yet the Bushies do nothing, change nothing, say nothing. We're supposed to just hope the insurgents will get tired of attacking us.

If FDR had fought WWII like that, we would have done nothing after Pearl Harbor. The strategy would have been to pretend they didn't hurt us, so eventually they would get tired of hitting us. We wouldn't have had a draft, no tax increases, we would have just kept on shopping. That's the libertarian way of fighting wars and as far as I can see, Bush is following it.

|2.26.06 @ 3:36PM|#

Nope...nerdman is just confused.

|2.26.06 @ 3:56PM|#

Well, yes. It is pretty confusing to read an article that at first wonders why the Bushies failed to plan adequately for Iraq and then ends up blaming it all on the liberals with their penchant for centralized planning.

The fact is, 'lazy and irresponsible' is the succinct diagnosis of the Bush administration and 'lazy and irresponsible' seems to me to sum up the libertarian world view as well.

The torture, for example, seems to have come more from laziness than from the intention of being overbearing. Bush likes to give contradictory directions, thus he signs laws outlawing torture while at the same time claiming that he's exempt from the law. The grunts on the ground are given the impression that torture is OK by president and then they get jailed when it all comes out in the open.

The reason the Bush government is out of control is not because Bush is a closet liberal, it's out of control because Bush is a closet lazy libertarian who is too lazy and irresponsible to do anything about it.

b-psycho|2.26.06 @ 5:03PM|#

If you seriously thought that Julian's column amounted to nothing more than a stereotypical bark against "liberals", then you don't deserve another response.

|2.26.06 @ 5:06PM|#

'lazy and irresponsible' seems to me to sum up the libertarian world view as well.

What?? Of course it's just the opposite.
The more libertarian a situation is, the more the dynamic of; from each as they choose, to each as they are chosen, applies. This is hardly an environment that promotes harmful sloth. Now libertarianism does tend to promote prosperity so that folks do have the choice of more leisure time.

Libertarianism promotes individual responsibility cuz it minimizes government bailing out people and corporaations from the consequences of their errant ways.

The idea of Julian's piece is that the Bush administration's neocon inspired and directed Iraq misadventure has the same pedigree as the failed approaches of the left.

|2.26.06 @ 7:06PM|#

As usual I like Julian's article. I am a big fan of Francis F. He's no ideologue but a dedicated social scientist. Sowell's articles are pure crap but his books are interesting. He actually wrote a great one on Marxism in his early days. This cannot be said of most of the 'neo-cons.' Now for some more controversial stuff...
Who are 'neo-cons?' Is it me or they either 1. rabid Likudian pro-Israel types (David Frum, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol) 2. neo-Cathlolic intellectuals (Robert George, Matt Franck, Hadley Arkes) and/or 2. former liberals from a social scientific background who tend to go along with 1 and 2 (and are skeptical of liberal social science i.e., Sowell, James Q. Wilson, Richard Posner). The first group have allegiances split between the US and Israel (and I don't mean this in any anti-Semitic way, there is a long history of ethnic groups within the US having split allegiances, from the Germans and Irish who urged us not to involve ourselves in WWI and II to the China Lobby which urged support for China vs. Japan) and are not serious about honest debate. The second group use their intellect for engaging in religious apology rather than honest criticism. The later are really honest (though understandably reluctant to break with the establishment that often feeds them) and that is why they are more critical of the Iraq War.
Lastly, are not libertarians guilty of falling into the vision of the anointed? Witness the naive faith they had in liberalizing Russia's economy post Soviet era. They really thought they could ignore Russian cultures and institutions and the faultless miraculous market would just solve everything. Ask Jefferey Sachs how well that went...

|2.26.06 @ 8:06PM|#

Mark B, you make one good point, and one bad one.

Haiti, ok, Haiti's a mess and has been for quite some time. But Venezuela had a second election under Chavez, and it came out clean as a whistle. Open campaigning and fundraising by the opposition, honest polling, virtually no violence - electoral democracy in Venezuela is as solid as in almost any nation in Latin America. Whether you like Chavez or not (I'm going to guess "Not" - am I right?), you have no grounds to your attack on how democracy is faring in that country.

And, regardless, backing a coup d'etat by military and business elites is NEVER the right thing to do to advance democracy. It sets back our ability to work for positive change. It announces to the people in the would-be democracy that violent, lawless regime change really is the best way to settle political disagreements. And in all but the most extreme cases, it is almost certain to bring about a less democratic regime than that it replaces.

Your second point, running down the popular uprisings because they're less likely to "work" in the short term, ignores the central issue in this debate - that change that comes about from grassroots resistance has a chance of taking root in the political cuture, while change rushed through elitist coups has no such chance.

The good guy kills the bad guy and the credits roll isn't a serious policy for promoting democracy. We the People need to do it the hard way.

|2.26.06 @ 8:43PM|#

>The idea of Julian's piece is that the Bush administration's neocon inspired and directed Iraq misadventure has the same pedigree as the failed approaches of the left.


The neocons didn't invade Iraq: George Bush did. George Bush is the one who decided not to supply a sufficient number of troops. George Bush is the one who decided it was OK for Rumsfeld to laugh off the initial looting and rioting by saying 'stuff happens' when you're free. George Bush is the one who thought the Iraqis would toss flowers at us and that we'd be out of there in a year. George Bush is the one who refuses to change course after four years of failure.

Bush isn't a liberal and he also isn't Hitler, as so many lefties stupidly think. He's a follower in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan and thus he's a lazy libertarian who doesn't believe in thinking, foresight, planning, or worrying--all of those things that nasty pointy headed liberals are always accused of engaging in.

Libertarianism is an easy, bozo thinker's philosophy. If a democratic government isn't supposed to make any decisions, than God knows you as a citizen don't have to make any decisions any either. You are in fact obliged not to do any thinking. All you have to do is eat your peanuts and watch the river flow. This is George Bush's mind to a tee--lazy and irresponsible.

Let's not forget that this country became prosperous and powerful under liberals, not under libertarians: Lincoln, Wilson, the two Roosevelts. They were all thinkers, planners, worriers, and doers. Bush, like Reagan, is none of those things. He's just the lazy, lucky hippie son of George Bush the first; a fuzzy minded anti-liberal who may as well still be on the bong. He doesn't believe in busting his ass for anything, thus it's no wonder we're still bogged in Iraq after four years.

|2.27.06 @ 12:00AM|#

Just because Libertarian philosophy advises against centrally planned economies doesn't mean it is against "planning". For instance, libertarian businessmen really do have long term plans, libertarian moms draw up study schedules for their kids, libertarian revelers stock up before Sunday if they happen to be in Utah etc. All perfectly good examples of "planning".

God only knows what this has to do with Bush's war plans ...

|2.27.06 @ 12:05AM|#

joe,

"that change that comes about from grassroots resistance has a chance of taking root in the political cuture, while change rushed through elitist coups has no such chance."

Chile.

|2.27.06 @ 12:33AM|#

nerdman:

The neocons didn't invade Iraq: George Bush did.

So ya really think it makes Bush look worse if you ignore reality and minimize the neocon's influence?

George Bush is the one who decided not to supply a sufficient number of troops.

You woulda sent more guys??

He's a follower in the footsteps of Ronald Reagan


I might be wasting my time teaching you history since you seemed so confused about the import of Julian's piece, but the Bush administration has promoted and overseen a very activist, liberal agenda. Government has grown on almost every front. The amount of discretionary spending has set new records He hasn't vetoed one bill!

Reagan, on the otherhand, oversaw an actual decrease in discretionary spending. The rate of growth in total spending fell off drastically from Carter. And the Federal register, a monitor of all federal regulations actually shrunk! The rates of job growth and personal wealth responded by setting new records.

Libertarianism is an easy, bozo thinker's philosophy. If a democratic government isn't supposed to make any decisions, than God knows you as a citizen don't have to make any decisions any either.

nerdman, I'm gonna recommend that you reasd someone. He's Friederich Hayek. He won the Nobel prize in economics and is a favorite among us libertarians. He showed that the planning that produces prosperity is of a diffuse and spontaneous nature. Planning for activist government intervention destroys prosperity.

You've been tossing around the accusation of "lazy" sans much understanding and reason. But it would really be lazy if you didn't expose yourself to some new paradigms.

|2.27.06 @ 1:06AM|#

Andrew's reponse to the, now manifest, failure of neoconservative foreign policy seems to consist of saying: "Well, you guys aren'r really true to your principles"-

But how many adult libertarians actually believe in marketing heroin like beer, or permitting a private stash of nuclear weapons?

Libertarians believe in the *legality* of marketing heroin like beer and if there was that legality, the problems that result cuz of prohibition would go away. Nuclear weapons exist exactly cuz of government.

(Libertarians exhibit) Probably too, a kind of Peter Pan Syndrome - an unwillingness to completely grow up into a Republican conservative.

Well Andrew, you've left conservatism completely. Who's your guy for 2006? Didn't you say Giuliani? If so, I rest my case.

|2.27.06 @ 1:37AM|#

...Oops. Of course I shoulda said: "Well Andrew, you've left conservatism completely. Who's your guy for *2008*? Didn't you say Giuliani? If so, I rest my case."

|2.27.06 @ 2:27AM|#

anon2,

I see you are going to take me to task for some off the cuff remarks. Well, without doing any research on the matter that goes past my own memory, here is what I have to say.

The discussion in question (as I recall) specifically concerns what Thornton has to say about how Europeans and Africans interacted, particularly on the water (near the African coast). And Sowell claims (as I recall) that Thornton can't really mean that European seafaring efforts there were at least partly dictated by Africans, when in fact (as I recall) that is exactly what Thornton means (and Thornton is quite clear about this too, again as I recall). Sowell's argument does a real disservice to Thornton's fine work and in doing so ignores (by discounting the control that Africans had over their immediate coastal areas) one of its key theses (IMHO) - that Africans were equal partners in the creation of the Atlantic world. Keep in mind how radical Thornton's conclusion is in comparison to say the work of earlier scholars like Walter Rodney (whose most famous work is How Europe Underdeveloped Africa).

Now this is clearly a blunder on Sowell's part and connotes one of the basic problems with his books on human history - his problematic use of historical data or sources. As the reviewer in the article I cited noted, there are other "howlers" in Sowell's book and my illustration is merely one example of such. IMHO its pretty damn disturbing and severely diminishes my confidence in the man's work (at least as a historian).

Of course one could argue that I am merely being nitpicky, however, when people from varying fields find similar kinds of mistakes you have to ask yourself, is this one of the many "universal histories" something I should spend much time on? Or would it be better for a reader to look to more insightful sources that are not so problematic? I'd direct you away from Sowell towards Braudel, Mokyr, Landes, Mann, Giddens, Wolf, Diamond, etc. An ideologically mixed group certainly, but all scholars who are far more careful than Sowell is (at least in their role as historians).

|2.27.06 @ 2:48AM|#

anon2,

As to A Conflict of Visions, what exactly could one learn from it that one can't learn from Burke? Is it the the zoo of neologisms that Sowell parades before the reader?

How do you explain Sowell's seeming claim that both groups are internally consistent when he at the same time argues that his classification is merely "empirical?"

How do you deal with societies that are neither based on the altar of human reason or tradition (which have been common enough to place a major hole in Sowell's two typology theory)?

|2.27.06 @ 8:40AM|#

SM,

Exactly, Chile. When it sloughed off the authoritarian dictatorship of Pinochet, it did so via popular organizing and elections, not a coup. The only thing a coup ever did for Chilean politics is end - not begin, end - its electoral democracy and civil liberties. For a time. Thankfully, there remained enough cultural commitment to democracy to overcome the dark years of the Pinochet regime.

|2.27.06 @ 12:16PM|#

Hakluyt,

This is a quick reply to your Feb. 27 2:48am post. I'll make a longer response to your preceding post later.

I haven't read A Conflict of Visions, nor is it on my "to read" list. I'm not a Sowell fanboy; I may never read it. Although Julian mentions ACoV, I specifically recommended (and still recommend) to Thoreau, Knowledge & Decisions. You initially dismissed all of Sowell's works, whether you meant to or not, and I obliquely pointed out that the historical component to much of Sowell's work is small to non-existent.

I can't speak for Sowell's two groups from ACoV, but it's easy to point out that abstractly that it is indeed possible to have empirical observations that two different ways of looking at something are both internally consistent. An example from mathematics would be Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry. They have different axioms, but are both internally consistent. That said, I'm sufficiently skeptical that the constrained vs. unconstrained view is sufficiently useful to me to make reading ACoV worthwhile.

It's all Stevo's fault. If he had watched the short I recommended and reported back, we'd have a data point to help Thoreau judge the worthiness of my recommendation of K&D.

|2.27.06 @ 12:33PM|#

How do you deal with societies that are neither based on the altar of human reason or tradition (which have been common enough to place a major hole in Sowell's two typology theory)?

Hak, if you read the book, you'll see that Sowell says the two visions, as he describes them, are actually two illustrative extreme endpoints on a continuum, rather than two digital black/white alternatives. Individuals may not be consistent in the vision they adhere to all the time. However, within the context of one vision or the other, you can see more clearly why a person who holds Opinion X will also tend to hold Opinion Y as a matter of internally consistent logic. Which is not to say that individuals are always logically consistent -- just that the idealized visions are.

Also, Sowell allowed for "hybrid visions" in the real world. For example, Naziism promotes the use of tradition and nonrational means to motivate the masses, but also assumes the elite leaders can rationally plan the economy and society.

Finally, the existence or non-existence of entire societies adhering to one vision or the other doesn't blow any holes in Sowell's theory, because he is talking about the visions held by individuals. A society can contain a mix of individuals adhering to either vision, and generally does.

Colin Creitz|2.27.06 @ 3:32PM|#

Here's a blogsafe link to Fukuyama's article.

|2.27.06 @ 9:59PM|#

Thanks Colin! I wanted to share it, but I couldn't cuz I couldn't access it again. Now I can.

|2.28.06 @ 1:28AM|#

Stevo Darkly,

His discussion of hybrids is non-sense, and his definition of Nazism is so tortured that only a fanboy would fall for it.

|2.28.06 @ 9:31AM|#

This thread is like some nightmare from last year's Season of the Gunnels.

|2.28.06 @ 11:47AM|#

Hakluyt,

I will re-scan Chapter 3 of C&C and look closely to see if I can find anything that fits your description. I certainly don't remember such a thing, but that doesn't mean it's not there. I'm not willing to 'cede "Now this is clearly a blunder..." because I am just now prepared to look for myself. Until your note of 02:27am, I simply wouldn't be able to judge for myself.

Although you've dismissed your comments as "off the cuff" and have without fanfare backed away from "Sowell's books are ..." to a more specific "...is so poor at least in the area of history", I've read enough Sowell and enough Hakluyt to come to my own conclusions about how best to gain useful information when reading each. I thought about trying to articulate the process, but I realized it's overkill. Who cares?

If there's anyone who reads this blog who respects your opinion enough to read your comment "Sowell's books are largely efforts in card-stacking and that is all" and be dissuaded from reading any of his books, then I think you've done him a disservice. Similarly, if there's anyone who would have read Sowell, eyes wide, believing every sentence without further thought or research, it could be that your anti-Sowell posts will have been a favor to that person. Personally, my guess is there's nobody in either category.

It's not that I think people dismiss everything you write. I just think your presentation is sufficiently flawed that in the first case, people will read the Sowell comments from all the authors on this thread and in the balance decide that your categorical denunciation is merely bombast. In the latter case, anyone who would be reading Sowell without question may read Hakluyt without question. If so, and that person believes everything you say, he won't read Sowell at all. If he dismisses everything you say, then your comments w.r.t. Sowell will be completely ignored. In other words, it takes less skill to separate the wheat from the chaff when reading Hakluyt than it does when reading one of Sowell's books.

Stevo and others who have read ACoV,

My fanboy comment was meant in the context that I don't think Sowell's books are so important that I go out and buy each and every one and immediately read them. I'm not suggesting that anyone who has a favorable opinion of ACoV is a fanboy. It could very well be that I'm doing myself a disservice not reading it. I haven't seen anyone on this blog who I suspect is a Sowell fanboy, but that's not too surprising, this being a Libertarian blog.