Trouble at Liberty Fund?

A long article in Indianapolis Monthly looks at recent turmoil at Liberty Fund. It details internal controversy over a "strategic refresh," changes in leadership and personnel, and the direction of the Law & Liberty blog.

Over the years, I've participated in many Liberty Fund events and have contributed to Liberty Fund publications, but I'm hardly an insider over there and the details in the report were news to me. Liberty Fund has been a fairly unique and highly valuable organization. It publishes affordable editions of out-of-print classics in topics related to classical liberalism. A lot of the books from their catalog are on my shelves. It hosts small, by invitation conferences that gather a diverse set of participants for long conversations about sometimes esoteric topics related to classical liberalism. I've attended quite a few over time and met some great people and participated in some great discussions that would not have occurred anywhere else. More recently they have launched a number of online initiatives, including a podcast, book reviews, and the blog.

The blog is certainly different than a lot of Liberty Fund's activities, so I can understand why it might have become a source of internal controversy. Even so, I'm saddened to hear that the organization has been having such difficulties. I sincerely hope that whatever strategic refresh is being implemented does not threaten the future of the book publishing and conference organizing that has long been at the heart of what Liberty Fund does and that provides a unique benefit to the broader classical liberal movement.

From the the article:

Law and Liberty is still going strong. The conferences are also still happening, but much less frequently than they were when [Nico] Maloberti first joined Liberty Fund, down from some 200 a year to 100. By this spring, the Liberty Fund ranks of fellows had considerably dwindled since Maloberti first joined, from a high-water mark of 16 fellows in 2008 to just five, some due to natural attrition as they moved to other jobs at Liberty Fund, in academia, and elsewhere and weren't replaced.

Read the whole thing here. (hat tip to Brian Leiter, where I first noticed this)

Comments

[Brett Bellmore]

They do have a pretty good catalog of books, I should nab a few for my son's library, especially if the foundation may be in trouble.

Charitable foundations seldom stay devoted to the vision of the founder for more than a generation, before being politically captured, often by the founder's own ideological foes. Politics is rather like an invasive cancer in that regard, it has little tolerance for institutions that might be useful to it, but refuse to take sides.

"Still, the decision to republish the book appalled a number of the fellows. One even organized a private book burning in which he invited opponents of the text to an outdoor area near his office. There they read aloud the offensive passages, tore pages from the book, and burned them in a small gas stove."

That's certainly contrary to the vision the foundation was founded to pursue! The rationale for publishing the book seemed quite sound. One side of an important debate was at risk of becoming unavailable.

Sounds like an over-correction may have occurred after the site actually started swinging in a leftwards direction, based on this incident.

[Bob from Ohio]

"One even organized a private book burning"

Nothing says Liberty like a good book burning.

[Brett Bellmore]

Robert Conquest famously promulgated 3 laws:

1 Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2 Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3 The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

The second rule has ample evidence to support it, and that's apparently what was starting to happen at the Liberty Fund. Hard to explain that book burning party otherwise.

I don't doubt that the purge that stopped the takeover overshot, that's to be expected.

[Bob from Ohio]

Liberty Fund was Whigish ["right libertarian" or "classical liberal" if you prefer], it moved to be conservative instead. The Old Guard Whigs didn't like it.

[Brett Bellmore]

The subject of the book burning hardly fits that scenario.

[Bob from Ohio]

It was a 60 year old supposedly anti-gay book they burned.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, that's what I said. Not remotely the sort of book you'd expect conservatives, of ANY stripe, to hold a book burning over.

Left-wingers? Yeah, they'd totally go ape-shit over a book like that, and light up the fire.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Left-wingers? Yeah, they'd totally go ape-shit over a book like that, and light up the fire."

Libertarians have the same social views as leftists.

It was the libertarian faction that organized the book burning back in 2010.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Libertarians have the same social views as leftists."

LOL! No, Libertarians don't have the same social views as leftists. I don't know if you got that impression because Conquest's 2nd law applies to nominally libertarian organizations, some of which have been overtaken by the long march through the institutions? Or maybe you just don't understand libertarianism that well.

Libertarians have some overlap with the social views of leftists. An overlap with pretty serious limits, that mostly relate to why you'd expect leftists to burn books they disagreed with, and be shocked to see libertarians do the same.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Devlin argued that homosexual acts (between men) should remain criminal, noting

There are no theoretical limits to the power of the State to legislate against treason and sedition, and likewise I think there can be no theoretical limits to legislation against immorality. You may argue that if a man's sins affect only himself it cannot be the concern of society. If he chooses to get drunk every night in the privacy of his own home, is anyone except himself the worse for it? But suppose a quarter or a half of the population got drunk every night, what sort of society would it be? You cannot set a theoretical limit to the number of people who can get drunk before society is entitled to legislate against drunkenness. The same may be said of gambling.

That seems like a difficult position to reconcile with any form of libertarianism I am familiar with.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" That seems like a difficult position to reconcile with any form of libertarianism I am familiar with. "

Some peculiar forms of "libertarianism" -- including "often libertarian" and "libertarianish," perhaps more accurately described as "ostensible libertarianism" or "faux libertarianism" -- that have developed among people sheepish about being known publicly as movement conservatives.

In these forms of "libertarianism," superstition-based gay-bashing and gay-bashers seem quite popular (along with statist womb management; authoritarian immigration policies and practices; torture; endless detention without trial; and other elements of the Republican Party platform).

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, it is. But, from a libertarian standpoint, so what?

Libertarianism is all about negative rights, and the Non Aggression Principle. Publishing a book isn't in any way aggression, no matter what the book advocates. Marxism violates right up the wazoo, but publishing Das Kapital doesn't violate any rights at all. Nazism massively violates rights, but publishing Mein Kampf doesn't violate anyone's rights.

So libertarians have no problems with the book being published, we'd have problems with aggressively preventing it from being published!

Libertarians don't defend the rights of homosexuals because we approve of homosexuality. Some of us may, some of us may not, but approving of it is utterly irrelevant from a libertarian standpoint.

Does homosexuality violate anyone else's rights? No. That's the start and end of the analysis from a libertarian standpoint. I'm perfectly free to think homosexuals have a disgusting neural birth defect, and still think they're entitled to do their disgusting things, just leave me out of it. (Which is why real libertarians fall on Masterpiece Bakery's side of that legal conflict; The gays wouldn't leave them out of it!)

So, no, burning a book because you disagree with it isn't a typical libertarian thing to do. I own books I totally disagree with, not the slightest urge to burn them.

It's the left that thinks error has no rights, that bad ideas should be forcibly suppressed. That burns books. And the right, sometimes, too, but not so much now that the power of censorship is mostly in the left's grip.

Publishing that book was perfectly in keeping with the Liberty Fund's mission, the people there who were burning it were there to subvert that mission.

[David Nieporent]

So libertarians have no problems with the book being published, we'd have problems with aggressively preventing it from being published!

Brett, they were not protesting the book "being published." They were protesting the fact that they were doing the publishing.

No, libertarians' mission is not to advocate for unlibertarian things.

[bernard11]

It's the left that thinks error has no rights,

You are so totally full of shit here that it is amazing. The sentence "Error has no rights" is a mainstay of conservative Catholicism.

Get an education before you mouth off about a bunch of things you know absolutely nothing about. It's a good way to avoid embarrassing yourself.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The sentence "Error has no rights" is a mainstay of conservative Catholicism."

It was at one time, yes. Officially ended by the 2nd Vatican counsel in the 1960's, so most living Catholics weren't even alive when it was still church doctrine. Rather short on application even prior to that. Bob's claim here was that it might have been classical liberals/libertarians burning that book.

Are you going to claim that classical liberalism/libertarianism is coextensive with obsolete Roman Catholic doctrine?

And that's not even getting to the point that the book was arguing that homosexuality should be illegal. Which is a stance that Roman Catholics or "old guard Whigs" would find so offensive that they'd want to burn that book, right? [/sarc]

No, Bernard, the idea that a bunch of conservatives were so offended by a book arguing for laws against homosexuality and other violations of traditional morality that they'd hold a book burning party is risible. This took place only a few years ago, and who's burning books today?

The left, not conservatives working for a book preservation foundation, not libertarians. The left.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Brett, they were not protesting the book "being published." They were protesting the fact that they were doing the publishing.

No, libertarians' mission is not to advocate for unlibertarian things."

The mission of the Liberty Fund is literally "to foster thought and encourage discussion of enduring issues pertaining to liberty."

You can't have a discussion if one side of the argument isn't available. And publishing a book that's going out of print isn't advocating. It's just publishing.

[wolfefan]

HI Brett. There are still conservative Roman Catholics who believe that "error has no rights", particularly the Lefebvreites at the Pius X society.

[bernard11]

suppose a quarter or a half of the population got drunk every night, what sort of society would it be?

I would say it is a society that has deep problems that alcohol prohibition will do nothing to solve.

But then, I'm not a Famous Conservative Thinker.

[Brett Bellmore]

"There are still conservative Roman Catholics who believe that "error has no rights", particularly the Lefebvreites at the Pius X society."

There are Roman Catholics who believe a lot of things. Doesn't change the fact that "error has no rights has not been Catholic doctrine since I was in kindergarten, and I'm old enough to qualify for social security.

It was already widely disreputable doctrine before I was born.

It's perfectly fine doctrine as far as a large faction of the left are concerned, though.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" The second rule has ample evidence to support it, and that's apparently what was starting to happen at the Liberty Fund. "

Please favor us with the liberty-rooted case for authoritarian, superstition-laced, right-wing gay-bashing, Mr. Bellmore. The Conspirators are too shy to try to make that case (most of the time), so the Volokh Conspiracy blog needs you.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Nothing says Liberty Fund like some good, old-fashioned, superstitious gay-bashing.

Some right-wingers -- especially and often those trying to hide their wingnuttery by masquerading about in silly libertarian drag --just can't hold back the authoritarian bigotry no matter the circumstance.