I have no time to expand, because I’m about to go out and about for the rest of the day, but just to say that this, by Julia Magnet for City Journal, is a terrific piece, about the great American movie maker (and about to be novelist, I read somewhere on my googlings for this) Whit Stillman. I adore his movies, especially Metropolitan, but the other two also. (Too bad they are still not yet available on DVD.)
Incidentally, my tastes in Stillman are shared in my corner of the blogosphere. See Patrick Crozier, and Stephen Pollard, who also links admiringly to the Magnet piece.
I won’t comment at length about Stillman, but I will just rattle off a few thoughts about why a devout libertarian like me adores the work of a deeply conservative critic of recent non-judgemental, post-modern, sexually liberated trends in bourgeois behaviour and thinking.
I am conservative in my tastes, in art, etiquette, manners (at least in aspiration), morals (ditto), drug use (for real – I never inhaled because I never touched it – too scary – the case for legalising drugs cannot be that they are harmless). It is merely that I am profoundly anti-conservative in politics, if by this is meant the imposition of my – superior and judgemental – tastes and opinions upon others. Political compulsion corrupts, and should always be regarded with suspicion, especially when what is being compelled is – to start with – genuinely virtuous and admirable. Why? Because then that which is genuinely virtuous and admirable will be corrupted, which is clearly far worse then when something silly and meretricious and wrong-headed is imposed, and corrupted. (That imposing something silly will probably do more immediate harm is true, but that is a different kind of argument to the one I just made.)
I believe that a Stillmanian attitude to social life will eventually win through in the free market of ideas and of institutions. I don’t believe that it has any chance in a world of politically imposed good manners.
That is the kind of conservative I am and the kind of libertarian I am. If libertarianism means assembling a panty collection from one’s sexual conquests and boasting about it, or in saying the first thoughtless thing that comes into your head no matter how hurtful, or in abandoning one’s children for the sake of personal liberation and pretending that one is doing them a favour, then to hell with libertarianism – that is to say with “libertinism”. It is just that the way to spread ideas like mine is to spread them by following one of them, which is not to force people to do things or think things against their will. It won’t work. Be eloquent. Don’t hit people. Argue with them, politely. Take a stand, but try not to be hurtful. Use words.
To put it another way: freedom creates civil society. Political compulsion destroys it.
Commenters please be kind, this was written in rather a hurry. Postings here have been a little thin lately, and I judged that something hasty, about and provoked by the thoughts and movies of Whit Stillman, would be better than nothing. I hope that at least some of you agree. For the kind of thing I would like to have managed, read the Julia Magnet piece.
My thanks to Tim Evans for drawing it to my attention with an email.
Re DVD availability:
Barcelona is now freely available via amazon.com (in a US coding).
Last Days of Disco was put out on DVD, but in tiny numbers: you can pick it up for a large sum on e bay every so often.
But the glorious news is that Metropolitan is being released on DVD. No exact date, but sometime this year is the plan.
Another reason to like him is how, in Barcelona, he elegantly lampooned the wilful ignorance and gullibility of the typical euro-leftie student type who would conflate the CIA with the (trade union) AFLCIO.
An the main point: I think it’s very important to stress that there is no conflict between libertarianism and either social conservatism or social liberalism. The conflict is only with those who would impose their own social views on everyone else.
I haven’t seen the films but my thoughts and sentiments, WRT personal conservatism and the critical importance of avoiding compulsion, are with you.
It is greatly annoying that some conservatives habitually mischaracterize libertarians as libertines.
Yes, I also greatly like Stillman’s movies (especially Metropolitan, but also Barcelona in particular). Metropolitan made a bit of a stir when released, but after that the level of attention paid to his subsequent films dropped, and he doesn’t seem to have been able to get the money together to follow up The Last Days of Disco, which was released in 1998. (Of course, he did say that he wanted to make something “completely different” after completing that film, so perhaps this is just taking a long time.
From you comments latter in you entry I don’t think that you believe conservatism has anything to do with “the imposition of my – superior and judgemental – tastes and opinions upon others”.
The desire to do that resides equally across the political spectrum. That is including libertarianism, for instance some libertarians that while individual censure is okay, efforts for a community to officially censure activities are automatically bad.
A conservative at root is one who believes that a society is an organism, that what individuals within a society do has effects on that society and individuals around them, and that forced change in a society is similar to medicine or surgery in that the results are never completely predictable. (This is as opposed to the belief that society is a machine that can be programed, with near perfect predictablity, or that society is completely illusionary.)
I have not yet seen Stillman’s films, so my comment will not be directly tied to that.
I definately agree, however, that the conservative and libertarian need not be in opposition. I am very much a conservative in my personal views of certain things, but I am opposed to government mandate of much of it. I am not as open as some libertarians to complete rollback of all laws that could be perceived to realte to “morality”, but I would certainly say that government should never take on the role of a parent.
I do certainly agree that individual’s actions can have an affect on those around him, even if it is not a direct interaction. On the other hand, I also believe that in the end it all comes back to the individual choice, so the actions of a “community” or individuals within it should not be held ultimately responsible for actions of any other member of that community. Imposition of one man’s will or choices on another should not be engaged in, but neither should anyone be restricted from personally censoring anything they wish. The tendency to do either of these is definately in every political movement, though sometimes I wonder if the libertarians tendency to not permit any such actions contributes to the lack of unity that group seems to have in the US….
Differentiating ‘libertinism’ and libertarianism is simple when you look at the motivation of the detractors toward either of them in turn.
People have a habit of concerning themselves with other people’s behavior because they fear that it will eventually effect them down the line. If a person is allowed to do as they please, the fabric of society will come undone and chaos will rule. If libertines do as they please ruin will befall us. In this case that is where conservatives and liberals (US sense) are one in the same in that they want to use the force of the State to stop ‘libertines’ and their harmful effects, though they probably widely differ on who the ‘libertine’ is.
Meanwhile the libertarian doesn’t necessarily presume that a person who wants to sleep with their dog is going to usher in the apocolypse, or that a businessman producing a product made of wood is either. A libertarian may hold personal reservations about another’s held beliefs and actions, which may effect their interpersonal relationship, but concludes that as long as a belief or conduct doesn’t harm life or property directly, it is not up to collective force to change another’s set of beliefs or their conduct, and that it useless to try.
Therefore libertarians are criticized from both types of social engineers who think they can change the world and it is easier to simply label them as libertines as well instead of the engineers proving their theocratic (basically) methods are worthy.
Also, that is why, to my mind, libertarians come in left and right varieties as separate groups, with different starting ‘meta-contexts’ come to the same conclusion; that the State as a tool to engineer outcomes is misguided. Each are free to hold their own beliefs and can try and persuade others to adopt similar beliefs and behaviors as long as State Force is reserved to its basic function of preserving life and property from direct threats.
The difference between conservatives and libertarians (or even modern liberals) in this sense is largely illusory.
All three groups seek to discourage behavior that they consider harmful. Libertarians would discourage harm to property & liberty, Conservatives would discourage harm to the moral fabric of society, and modern liberals would discourage harm to the environment and a victim’s self-esteem. It’s really just a matter of what you consider most important. Each group would use the power of the state to protect the valuable.
If the Libertarians have any advantage over the Conservatives & Modern Liberals, it’s that the harms they seek to avoid are more directly observable. This is harm to property, and this is not. It’s physical. It can be measured and compenstated for. Damage to a society’s moral fabric is completely in the eye of the beholder (since it’s purely damage to a subjective opinion). The damage to self-esteem is just as hard to measure or assign value. There is no market in self-esteem which determines it’s price.
I haven’t seen Mr. Whit Stillman’s movies, so I’m sorry I cannot comment on them. I must say that I agree with the tenor of Brian’s post. Virtues are virtuous only when freely chosen.
But wait…people’s emotions, however ephemeral, are very real. People’s productivity and earnings potential can be severely impacted if they are clinically depressed. In American today people are quick (too quick?) to sue for emotional damages, but if you presuppose that freedom to earn an optimal amount of reward for your work is a right all people possess; than trampling upon it with cruel words and actions is a harm to them. A real, if hard to measure, one. A true libertarian would have to award relief for someone who’s liberty had been intruded upon in that way.
Is compulsion by lawsuit better than compulsion by statute? Perhaps, but what lawsuits will be allowed?
Very curious…
I’m both libertarian and libertine. I don’t mean to dissuade you from supporting libertarianism, but in a libertarian world, I doubt I would be persuaded to follow socially consertive behavior.
Brock,
You rather miss the point:
“All three groups seek to discourage behavior that they consider harmful, Libertarians would discourage harm to property & liberty”
Actually Libertarians have no interest in “discouraging behavior” at all, harmful or otherwise. You assume that all political philosophies favour utilitarian social engineering. This, however, runs contrary to Libertarianism.
I think Brock also confuses systems which dictate what you must do versus what you must not do. Conservatives and liberals (US sense) promote agendas whereby money is confiscated to Good Works of some type which means the individual is bound to labor affirmatively on another’s behalf and is cajoled into doing so with promises of benefits. Meanwhile libertarians do not want to change anything or make someone else work or labor for a cause. We want to be left to our own devices and our own systems of value judgements in the expending of our mental and physical labor, which in turn creates tangible property that we will defend with force. It is this force which is contracted to the Minarchic State who is then bound to do so on our behalf.
As for mental health as a form of property, if one could evidence that one is coming under some form of systematic conditioning so as to harm their psychology I would think other privacy laws are being broken long before. Using harsh language or otherwise ‘harming’ someone’s psyche in an oblique or tangential way and having that stand as crime is like saying exhaust from a car is directly causing lung problems in a specific individual. So small in the grand scheme as to be inconsequential. In the end people’s psyches are so multi-faceted and based in an epistemological unknown that to base public policy on it is ludicrous. And yet…….
In a libertarian society the only thing that can be banned is the use of force or fraud. Cruel words cannot be said to be force.
Brock said: “But wait…people’s emotions, however ephemeral, are very real. People’s productivity and earnings potential can be severely impacted if they are clinically depressed. In American today people are quick (too quick?) to sue for emotional damages, but if you presuppose that freedom to earn an optimal amount of reward for your work is a right all people possess; than trampling upon it with cruel words and actions is a harm to them.”
There are several problems with this. The first and most obvius is that you cannot “trample” upon a persons objective freedom with words. Words on there own do not contain the power to limit another persons actions. If a person is so emotionaly weak that mere words can cause such harm then that is their own responsibility and their own responsibility to seek help.
The second problem is that Brock assumes that cruel words have caused the other persons emotional harm. But different people can react to words in different ways. One person may be upset, but another may not care, or even take the words as a challenge. There is no objective way to measure how different people will react to the same words, and therefore this cannot be policed in any way.
The third problem is that most emotionaly healthy people are hardly likely to become so depressed by another persons words that their earning potential is harmed. The only person that might would be a person already suffering from clinical depression or some other mental/emotional illness, in which case the problem lies within the ill person, and no fault can be laid at the feet of the person who used cruel words. The person suffering such illness is fully responsible for themselves, and it is up to them to seek apropriate help.
Law must be based on objective facts, not emotions. An individuals emtions are real to them persoanlly, but they cannot be the subject of law.
Words have power. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword.
Or have we forgotten how by a few words and ideas, a few madmen can wreck so much havoc on the world? If words themselves can drive otherwise law abiding people to deeds that are unspeakably evil even though they know of the consequences, should not the words be banned?
I wiah I was idealist enough to believe that it works, but the pragmatic side of me just doesn’t think so.
In any case, there must be balance. Balance between the state and the individual. Just where that balance is, depends on the scoiety in question. There’s no such thing as a one perfect system that is suitable for all people and all conditions.
“Words have power. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword.”
Is it? If you put two men in a ring and arm one with a pen and one with a sword which would you bet on to win?
Yes words have power. But they do not have the power to force people to do what they truly do not want to do, and the initiation of force is the only moral basis on which to ban anything.
“Or have we forgotten how by a few words and ideas, a few madmen can wreck so much havoc on the world? If words themselves can drive otherwise law abiding people to deeds that are unspeakably evil even though they know of the consequences, should not the words be banned?”
But words did not drive anybody to do anything. At some point the people in question chose, of their own free will, to give power to the madmen and to follow them. They chose, again of their own free will, to believe the words the madmen spoke. They were not forced to. They were certainly not forced to by words. Individuals are responsible for their choices and actions. More importantly, they lived in societies that gave the madmen the very power that you want to give the state. It was the existence of states with the power to ban speech and control people that allowed Hitler and Stalin to commit their crimes. Can you see that if you give the state that much power, sooner or later a madman, or madwomen, will come along and abuse it?
As to words being banned, which words? If you get ten people in a room you will get entirely different opinions as to what should be banned. I have met leftists who think that all conservative speech is hate speech that should be banned. Many left wing people would also think that some of your own posts here about Muslims were hate speech that should be banned. And certainly my opinions about the Arab world would be considered hate speech by some on the left. On the other hand I consider leftists who hold placards on protests showing President Bush as Hitler to be hate speech. So who decides? And on what rational basis? If you try to please everybody, then you will end up banning all speech and pleasing nobody. As soon as you give the state the power to regulate speech, freedom has gone out the door in any objective sense. And you simply cannot trust people with that much power.
“I wiah I was idealist enough to believe that it works, but the pragmatic side of me just doesn’t think so.”
But as I pointed out above your ideas on this issue are not pragmatic. They are in fact woefully idealistic. The only truly pragmatic resolution is to base society on the non-initiation of force and fraud. That is the only thing that can be objectively measured, and therefore it is the only thing that the law and the state should be concerned with. The libertarian understanding of freedom is not utopian or idealistic, it is grounded in a rational, moral and entirely pragmatic understanding of human experience.
“In any case, there must be balance. Balance between the state and the individual. Just where that balance is, depends on the scoiety in question. There’s no such thing as a one perfect system that is suitable for all people and all conditions.”
Why not? There may be no such thing as a perfect system, but it is possible to have a rational system that applies equally to all societies and people. And the principle of the non-initiation of force is just that. Any society that exists by intiating force against its citizens is not a free or moral society.
Of course drugs are not harmless.
People in chronic pain chronically take drugs. Just because Drs. have not recognized this pain as being ameliorated by drugs (PTSD mostly) is not a valid reason for a government ban.
It is possible for those with an idle interest to become habituated to drugs. A two week detox in the case of opiates will fix that problem.
Addiction requires two initiators – genetic susceptibility and significant trauma. Baring those in conjunction addiction is quite unlikely. Which is why so few who try drugs become addicted.
Drugs are not an evil demon waiting to ensnare the unwary. Despite what you have heard.
Shawn,
Goedel proved that such a system would not have valid answers for every question.
Despite that libertarians continue to prattle on about some set of rules that can solve every problem. The universal solvent of politics.
Judgement is required. Rules are not enough.
You’re making me wonder out loud about another question, which is: “What kind of effect does agreeing or disagreeing with a film’s political point of view have on your enjoyment level?”
I confess that surfing the web I’m often surprised by how many people say they loved (or hated) a movie because of its (presumably) political point of view.
I’m not sure whether to take this to mean that many people are prone to justify their likes and dislikes on political grounds, or to mean that many people really do enjoy (or dislike) a movie primarily because of its p-o-v.
Any thoughts here from anyone? I suppose this makes me as effete as can be, but as for me, first I enjoy (or dislike) a movie, and I worry about its political point of view later. There’s this funny thing arty people say — “it works,” or “it doesn’t work.” You may, say, enjoy or dislike “Dirty Harry,” whether or not for its point of view — but it’s pretty indisputable that it “works.” And I guess whether or not a movie works is far more important to effete me than what its political p-o-v is.
That said, I’m glad Stillman is making, or has been able to make, the kinds of movies he does. But I often find that I like what he seems to want to do more than what he actually succeeds in doing — in terms of whether or not his movies “work,” I find they’re pretty hit or miss, with “Disco” being the one that hits least frequently.
I do cut him extra slack for trying, though — that’s true. Glad to see someone trying to put some of these experiences up on screen, and in the rather wry, slightly formal, dialog-heavy way that he does. “Barcelona”‘s my fave partly because I spent time as a clueless mid-American in Europe during the ’70s (earlier, but similar), and he certainly got how bewildering and annoying it was to be jumped on all the time by self-righteous Euros. At the time I was there, everyone was sneering at us for Vietnam — it was quite unpleasant. And that final brief scene, where the characters are back in the midwest, grilling burgers (I think, something like that anyway) … The bliss of a modest mid-American life. It was refreshing to see: when does a Hollywood picture portray these people so fondly and with such respect?
Anyway, thoughts here about how a film’s political p-o-v affects your enjoyment level?
Michael B
Thanks for all that!
I did truly love Metropolitan from the word go, and a lot of my pleasure was precisely because it was so “dialog heavy”.
I love the later Woody Allens for the same reason, and more than the early slapstick ones, because they are about characters who use words to try to make sense of their lives. And the Woody Allens are full of people whose opinions I … I was going to say despise … and that is very nearly it. Take Everyone Says I Love You. There, a character suffers brain damage and becomes Right Wing. But by the end, all is well, and he reverts to Liberalism. I thought that was hilarious. I mention this because what I love about Stillman, and especially Metropolitan, is what it has in common with Woody Allen and not just what makes it different (the political axioms of the leading characters).
I then immersed myself more in the Stillman trilogy (I agree with you in finding Disco the least entertaining) and realised more and more that his politics is a lot like mine also. But it was the personal appeal and behaviour of the characters, their habit of finishing sentences intelligently, and finishing a lot of sentences intelligently, the way I have always liked to, that first charmed me.
I also like a lot of other left inclined films, because of their dialog heaviness and intellectual substance, such as a lot of the Jane Fondas, where it seems to me that she was at least trying to portray really interesting characters and not just be bimbo support.
Of course the underlying belief in these films, that political/social/intellectual ideas matter, is one I share with them, even as I disagree about what these should be.
And for the same reasons I do like a lot of the Eastwood/Die Hard/Death Wish type movies, because they too are often absolutely throbbing with ideas, verbally expressed, in among all the pillaging and murdering.
In extreme contrast, I loath those continental movies which are hard-sold by critics as meaningful, but when all that is happening is that the camera seems to me to be staring a something very beautiful, but without any meaning at all that I can detect. See Binoche, Juliette. (I did a no doubt over the top attack of the Three Colours trilogy on my Culture Blog a while back, during whic I found it very hard to stay awake.)
Anyway, I hope that answers some of your questions.
“Shawn,
Goedel proved that such a system would not have valid answers for every question.
Despite that libertarians continue to prattle on about some set of rules that can solve every problem. The universal solvent of politics. ”
No system ever will have valid answers to every question. And libertarians have never to my knowledge “prattled on” about a set of rules that can solve every problem. On the contrary what we advocate is not a set of rules for problem solving, but a principle on how human beings can relate to each othe without resorting to force and fraud. Life is complex. NO poltical system will have all the answers. And any that claims to is likely to be some form of totalitarianism. Thats the difference between libertarians and socialists. We dont expect the state to solve every problem. We expect individuals to work things out for themselves.
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