I have had a wave of interesting e-mails from Samizdata.net readers about the fallacious Jonah Goldberg missive ‘Freedom Kills’ and my reply to it. Whilst there were a variety of incoming views on the matter, it does seem everyone is queuing around the block with their baseball bats eager to take a swing at the dangling Goldberg piñata.
Let me address just two of the e-mails. Sarah Walker from New Zealand writes (excerpt):
The way I see it, you let him off easy. Rather than just pointing out his glaring errors, you need to emphasize that what he is objecting to is the libertarian antipathy to civic coercion and his implicit authoritarianism. Libertarians such as myself who take the rational ‘fallibilism’ approach, think that whilst truth is objective, it is also conjectural, therefore realise the foolishness of imposing by force what can only ever be conjecture. That is ‘cultural’ libertarianism. It means that we do not accept every demented belief just because it makes us feel good, merely that we reject dogmatism and its political manifestations, such as conservatism and socialism. A libertarian may say ‘if you want to go join the Taliban/become a Christian/believe the moon is made of cheese, I am not going to stop you doing that’, yet that is not the same as saying ‘because all ideologies are the same’. I think the Taliban are evil tyrants, that Christianity is irrational superstition and that the moon is not made of cheese, and I will strongly argue my views, ridiculing the Taliban, Christianity and the idea of cheddar cheese moons. Yet I have no problem tolerating these idiotic beliefs in others (unless they intend to do violence to me) even though I believe I am correct and they are not.
Mark Wells similarly bristles at the Goldberg article but he also takes issue with one of my remarks in which I said “Almost everything [Goldberg] ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis”. Mark writes (excerpt):
Maybe not. What Mr. Goldberg calls “find[ing] whichever creed or ideology fits us best” seems to be common among libertarians: evaluating creeds and ideologies and finding one (or a combination of several) that fits our experience, instead of just committing to one at random.
“You want to be a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? Sure, mix and match, man; we don’t care.”His objection is not to moral relativism; it’s to independent thought that cuts across the boundaries of tradition. Goldberg makes this clear in his attack on Nick Gillespie:Gillespie keeps going beyond [disdain for identity politics], and argues that people should be able to be whatever they want.”What does Goldberg think they should be able to be? Why can’t one be, for example, a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? In Goldberg’s analysis, it’s not because he believes there’s a logical contradiction in such a worldview but because he thinks it’s disloyal. Different traditions ought to remain separate, so as to spare people like Goldberg the trouble of thinking about them. Goldberg writes:There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.)–only personal ones.”If Goldberg’s idea of a ‘universal truth’ is the authority of tradition or patriotism on a grand scale, many libertarians would indeed reject it.
I think both Sarah and Mark make good points even if not all libertarians would subscribe to all their views (many libertarians are indeed Christians). One of the reasons I said “Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis” [emphasis added] is that he is correct about a few things but grossly misinterprets what they actually mean. Libertarians do not view all ideologies as equal, however they take a non-dogmatic approach (at least the Popperians like Sarah do, pace Ayn) and as free thinkers are willing to examine a wider variety of cultural influences than Goldberg seems to think is healthy, seeing as we view choice as having intrinsic value. For example when Goldberg claims:
Virginia Postrel can write triumphantly that the market allows Americans to spend $8 billion on porn and $3 billion at Christian bookstores, because she isn’t willing to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.
Yet it is clear Virginia Postrel is indeed making a judgement, just not the particular one that Goldberg thinks is at issue. What she is saying simply does not pertain to either Christianity or porn and contrary to what Goldberg thinks, that is far from being a lack of “willing[ness] to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.” Au contraire, Jonah. I do not know Virginia Postrel personally yet it is abundantly clear what she means. It is a clear statement that what is of value here is not the porn or the Christian books but the value of a society based around having THE CHOICE. It’s that whole liberty thing again.
