Goofus and Gallant: Statist vs. Laissez-faire

I love Jon Gabriel's stuff, and with his Goofus & Gallant update, he has scored again. Check them all out; this is my favorite:

Huh, huh--he said phallocracy.

Speaking of Libertarians

Since we are on the topic of libertarians (small 'l', if you please) I should point out an excellent piece on American Thinker by Doug Thorburn about why libertarians should vote for Republicans. Thorburn presents the case well, first highlighting the difficulties he has had with Republicans over the years, but then getting practical and results-oriented about it in the two concluding paragraphs:

Voting for Libertarian Party candidates today serves only to divide the vote between those who would slow (Republicans) or reverse (libertarians) the trend towards increasing statism. Splitting the vote allows those who would accelerate that trend to win by default. We need to support -- dare I say it? -- the lesser of the evils. While most votes require me to hold my nose, I get lucky now and then and truly support a candidate. I would love the opportunity to vote for a Rand Paul, a Ted Cruz, a Marco Rubio -- and suspect I will soon have such an opportunity. But we need to ensure Republicans -- even those we would never vote for in a sane world – win the Senate so that we can hold the line in the interim. We can’t afford to give another seat on the Supreme Court to a pseudo-liberal. The reign of Harry Reid, one of the most despicable statists ever to hold elected office, must end.

My pocketbook is walking the walk today. I am supporting, via monetary donations, libertarian-leaning Republicans and even non-libertarian Republicans in close races against statists/Democrats. This includes those running for Senate in Colorado, Alaska, Iowa, North Carolina and New Hampshire and, for governor, in Wisconsin. (I sent a bit to Mia Love in Utah even though she’s winning handily in her congressional race, only because she should be the face of the Republican Party.) I’m considering sending financial support to Republican senators running in Louisiana and Georgia, but waiting until the expected runoffs. I implore other libertarians to vote for and monetarily support Republicans. If there is any chance to salvage some semblance of constitutional limited government, it must be tried. After 40+ years, it’s obvious the Libertarian Party, while serving as an educational platform, cannot win a major political office. The Republican Party is, faults and all, our only hope.

I wouldn't say the "lesser of the evils", but I know that's a coined phrase. I prefer to say "the better of the imperfect candidates" if I'm talking about, for example, voting for John Kasich rather than Ed FitzGerald. I mean, come on, FitzGerald isn't evil, just horribly misguided in his ideology and displaying awful judgment in his personal life. And I'd say the same about Obama and Sherrod Brown, for that matter.

Politics really is the art of the possible, Moreover primary season is the time to knock out GOP "company men" if you think they need to step aside for more dedicated conservatives or libertarians. No one would have thought to themselves a few years ago "Hey, I'll bet a libertarian-leaning no-name candidate could knock out Eric Cantor in a primary." But that's what happened. Hopefully small-l-libertarian Dave Brat will win the general, but there is a Libertarian Party candidate on the ballot, also. (Big 'L' -- for loser.) Hopefully people voting in that race will take Thorburn's advice and vote for someone with a chance to win.

Rod of Arc

In his most recent post donkey punching the GOP, Rod Dreher draws his line in the sand, pokes his finger in the dike, and makes his stand in the pass at Thermopylae:

I am not a libertarian; if anything, I’m a Red Tory, or a Christian Democrat in the European sense. But ours is not a culture where Red Toryism or Christian Democracy makes much sense. It might have at one time, but not anymore. I have been thinking for a couple of years now that if I’m going to protect my religious liberty rights (the most important right, in my view), I’m going to have to figure out how to do so within a libertarian framework.

So here we have Dreher's latest branding: no longer the impossible to sell Crunchy Con, he has now burst forth transcendentally from that crunchy chrysalis to become the Jean D'Arc standing between you and the lime eaters ready to strip you of your religious liberty.

First question(s): How much relief and confidence does Rod's new stance instill in you? Enough to overlook his _______ (fill in the blank)?

Second question(s): Clearly in our current environment this is a gambit with potential. If you yourself wouldn't follow Rod to the barricades, who do you see as his most likely market and followers?

Final question(s): If your individual liberty ends up getting discounted and falling somewhere behind your religious liberty, are you still okay with having your religious options preserved for you by some non-individual-you religious group (the alternative to your own individual choice)? Might be the religious group you belong to now. Might not.

Oh...and where would you look to politics and in particular any of the political parties in all of this?

Damned Libertarians. by Bubba

[The following post was written last Wednesday by guest blogger and good friend, Bubba & edited by Yours Truly.]

Rod Dreher likes this statement of Mark Shea's

The libertarian tends to remember that government is a menace due to the fall. He does not tend to remember that he is a menace due to the fall. He wants freedom from government so that he can do whatever the hell he wants. And frequently, he wants hell.

calling it really, really good and "Chestertonian".

The Man from K Street, who is often so astute in his criticism that it's a wonder he's still permitted to comment, notes that the traditionalists share some personality traits with libertarians, particularly in their lack of a real public spirit, what K-Man calls poliphobia.

Shea, as usual, has it half-correct. ~80% of the libertarians I know are certifiable misanthropes.

Guess what, though? So are the vast majority of Paleocons I've known--Shea's "traditionalist conservatives" and libertarians share more personal qualities than I think either would care to admit, and one quality in particular:

Poliphobia. It is one of the great practical fallacies of both libertarianism and even religiously tinged Paleoconservatism. Both are philosophies that tend to attract disproportionate numbers of people who have no real public spirit whatsoever, no poliphilia.

It isn't the first time a critic of the Crunchies made this charge, as Rod addressed a similar idea fifteen months ago.

He responds, first, by saying that we shouldn't be presumptuous about the Crunchies' community activities, as if they have never been presumptuous about others. He then demonstrates having missed the point entirely by writing, "I also don’t see why it doesn't count as community activism to be involved in building up one’s own 'little enclaves.'"

("Who is my neighbor?" the lawyer asked in Luke 10. Does Rod think the answer was "only your blood relatives?")

He then says that the reason he does less community work than his father is because he works longer hours, and he "can't" do otherwise. ("Believe me, if I could work shorter hours, I would.")

I wonder if that explanation would fly with Rod for those who are more comfortable within mainstream conservatism and what he calls the "party of greed." I hope that Christian charity and simple consistency would encourage him to give them the benefit of the doubt rather than write that they're embracing convenient excuses to indulge their conspicuous lifestyles, that they really could work fewer hours if their priorities were aligned more with God, family, and the Permanent Things.

But, returning to Shea's quote, the Man from K Street misses a similarity between the traditionalists and the libertarians, something that commenter ScurvyOaks notices: the traditionalist conservative is a menace due to the fall just as much as the libertarian.

Speaking for myself and my own libertarian tendencies, I don't deny that I have been a fallen sinner in need of God's grace and redemption, but I'm not sure how salvation and the subsequent growth into spiritual maturity is hampered by limited government, or how it is enabled by people like Shea telling me what to do and having the coercive force of the government to impose his will upon me.

Immediately after the Chestertonian condemnation of libertarians, Shea writes, "The Traditionalist (and by this, I have in view the Christian tradition since it is, like, the basis of Western civilization) wants freedom in order to attempt, with God's help, virtue."

Because he too is fallen, I doubt the typical traditionalist truly desires virtue with all his heart. Because he too is fallen, I doubt his conception of what is virtuous is flawless, and because he too is fallen, I doubt that his political program for maximizing virtue does not contain serious unintended consequences.

Let's focus on the conception of what is virtuous.

Caleb Stegall wrote that finding Jesus is perhaps impossible in the suburbs, and Rod recently wrote about the virtue and possible necessity of staying in one place. When people like them endorse the view that libertarians want Hell, they may be condemning much more than the legal brothels and opium dens that some libertarians advocate: they may be criticizing the simple freedom to live where one wants.

They can believe whatever foolish thing they want, but when they want political power to be wielded to accomplish their goals, and when they criticize as literally damned those who are wary of such an abuse of power, they reveal the dangerous direction of their political beliefs.

Perhaps they should stop sighing over their own pseudo-Chestertonian quips long enough to consider something C.S. Lewis wrote, which Thomas Sowell recorded as one of his favorite quotations.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Thanks for reading my blog. For current commentary and what-not, visit the Est Quod Est homepage