The Totalitarian Temptation and all that

The slippery slope argument that somehow liberalism/progressivism tends to threaten freedom, hinges on the observation that liberals think they know what is really good for people, and generally think they have some arguments about all this that make a considerable amount of sense…. But obviously conservatives think they know what’s really good for people, and think they have arguments that make a certain amount of sense

This is very, very nice — it’s stuff I’ve thought about in an inchoate, disorganized way, but hadn’t gotten clear.

What this enlightened elite should do is use the government (i.e. by forcibly shrinking it) to induce those who are deluded by false values to accept the true ones.

Hmmm — I just skimmed the transcript, but I can’t quite find that proposal. Seems more like Murray is claiming that a scientific results (from pych and particularly evolutionary psych) will generate a public consensus, which will undermine the appeal of leftism among the voters, which will lead a different (and smaller) form of government. Where does he suggest that rational elites should force a new form of government on an unwilling populace (who will only later be transformed into ‘new’ men and women)? And how, in a democratic society, would such forcing take place anyway — is that also somewhere in the details that I missed?

Actually, on a second read, it sounds like far from suggesting that a different set of elites should force a counter-revolution on an unwilling populace, he’s suggesting that elites should reconnect with the mass of people in the center:

Why do I focus on the elites in urging a Great Awakening? Because my sense is that the instincts of middle America remain distinctively American. When I visit the small Iowa town where I grew up in the 1950s, I don’t get a sense that community life has changed all that much since then, and I wonder if it has changed all that much in the working class neighborhoods of Brooklyn or Queens. When I examine the polling data about the values that most Americans prize, not a lot has changed. And while I worry about uncontrolled illegal immigration, I’ve got to say that every immigrant I actually encounter seems as American as apple pie.

The center still holds. It’s the bottom and top of American society where we have a problem. And since it’s the top that has such decisive influence on American culture, economy, and governance, I focus on it.

Small is the opposite of big. But this misses the point. At the philosophical level, the concern is not big or small. Coercion is as coercion does.

But a small government is inherently much less able to coerce than a large one. It has, for example, neither the coercive drug laws nor the SWAT teams to go out and kick doors to enforce them.

I have no particular use for Murray or ‘values conservatives’ generally. But I don’t think this attempt at rhetorical jujitsu works.

Elegant and insightful, as usual. But a genuine question:

Has Holbo *ever* written something on politics that made a positive case for the left/progressive side of anything, as opposed to pointing out the hypocrisy and bad faith of the conservative side?

But the slippery slope argument has never depended so much on the claim that actually Barack Obama will build concentration camps (occasional Glenn Beck allegations notwithstanding); rather liberals want to force others to accept a kind of government that will bring with it certain values.

This requires that you accept that very particular notion of “coercion” that’s current on the American right, i.e., the one where allowing same-sex couples to marry is a dreadful imposition on every heterosexual married couple in the country.

In USian English:

‘Conservative’ = apocalyptic activist cadre bent on fomenting permanent revolution on behalf of the rich; social engineer dedicated to constructing the free market utopia
‘Liberal’ = pragmatic, cautious people like Paul Krugman fighting a rearguard action against the final destruction of the post-war welfare consensus, defender of government intervention in the economy

Once you realise that the words are being used in a completely nonsensical way all is clear.

Once you realise that the words are being used in a completely nonsensical way all is clear.

Engels makes my point better than I could. Thanks, dude. 8^)

Conservatism in power means larger, not smaller government, not only because the extreme inequality it favors must be defended by coercive force but because the economy requires huge amounts of government spending to stay afloat in the face the perpetual demand deficit created by that same inequality. What you end up with is less like a virtuous Republic and more like an Eastern Roman Empire, a militarized state dominated by functionaries, not entrepreneurs.

I thought the odd thing about the speech was the description of The Hell That Is Europe:

Drive through rural Sweden, as I did a few years ago. In every town was a beautiful Lutheran church, freshly painted, on meticulously tended grounds, all subsidized by the Swedish government. And the churches are empty. Including on Sundays. Scandinavia and Western Europe pride themselves on their “child-friendly” policies, providing generous child allowances, free day-care centers, and long maternity leaves. Those same countries have fertility rates far below replacement and plunging marriage rates. Those same countries are ones in which jobs are most carefully protected by government regulation and mandated benefits are most lavish. And they, with only a few exceptions, are countries where work is most often seen as a necessary evil, least often seen as a vocation, and where the proportions of people who say they love their jobs are the lowest.

What’s happening? Call it the Europe syndrome. Last April I had occasion to speak in Zurich, where I made some of these same points. After the speech, a few of the twenty-something members of the audience approached and said plainly that the phrase “a life well-lived” did not have meaning for them. They were having a great time with their current sex partner and new BMW and the vacation home in Majorca, and saw no voids in their lives that needed filling.

It was fascinating to hear it said to my face, but not surprising. It conformed to both journalistic and scholarly accounts of a spreading European mentality. Let me emphasize “spreading.” I’m not talking about all Europeans, by any means. That mentality goes something like this: Human beings are a collection of chemicals that activate and, after a period of time, deactivate. The purpose of life is to while away the intervening time as pleasantly as possible.

>(Forcing people not to have something they think they want is no less coercive than
>forcing them to have something they don’t think they want.)

But that is a LIBERAL analysis and frame, not a conservative one. A conservative views the same event as “Preventing people from taking some thing they think they want from those to whom it rightfully belongs is much less coercive than forcing some change on people who don’t want it or agree to it”. The Libertarian version is, “Forcing a person or entity not to take a thing from the rightful owner isn’t coercive. Taking something from its rightful owner or forcing something on someone who doesn’t want it is, no matter the motive or agent.”

aside – The distinction between the last two is singular versus plural – the base ‘agent’ of society for the libertarian is the individual, the base ‘agent’ for the conservative is some unit of social order, whether it is the ‘community’, the ‘country’, ‘the moral majority’, or what-haveyou. So a court ruling overturning (say) a ban on sodomy is welcomed by the libertarian (who sees it as lifting a restraint on an individual who isn’t otherwise interfering with anyone else’s rights) while opposed by the conservative (who sees it as forcing acceptance of something the community has deemed wrong). I’d bet a libertarian-conservative hybrid like Murray would be have mixed feelings on the issue. Certainly the National Review editorial staff did and does.

Slocum: “But a small government is inherently much less able to coerce than a large one. It has, for example, neither the coercive drug laws nor the SWAT teams to go out and kick doors to enforce them.”

Not necessarily; if one could beef up the police, surveillance state and prison systems in this country by a fair amount, and not have greater total government, so long as one also cut the Evul Librul parts of government at least that much. And in a hard-core right-wing state, the repressive mechanisms could be very, very efficient (trial? what’s that?).

And adding onto Jim Harrison’s point, the right doesn’t like small government. They just disagree on what to do, and whom to tax.

Change “Not necessarily; if one could beef …” to “Not necessarily; one could beef …”

Uncle Kvetch
“This requires that you accept that very particular notion of “coercion” that’s current on the American right, i.e., the one where allowing same-sex couples to marry is a dreadful imposition on every heterosexual married couple in the country.”

This particular facet of conservatism drives me out of my mind. They claim to be against “Big Government” and for “Individual Freedom” when in reality they are just against government that they don’t like and are only for freedom if it falls within specific limits that they get to dictate. Bunch of hypocrites

Uncle Kvetch – “This requires that you accept that very particular notion of “coercion” that’s current on the American right, i.e., the one where allowing same-sex couples to marry is a dreadful imposition on every heterosexual married couple in the country.”

I address your comment to point out a difference in understanding not to argue for / or against the specific issue you raise.

To many conservatives the issue is a conflict between freedom of religion versus a personal freedom. The conservatives are being asked to give up some of their religious freedoms (definition of marriage, definition of a specific right/wrong, teach their children the right/wrong of sexual behavior) to grant some other group a right.

james:
“To many conservatives the issue is a conflict between freedom of religion versus a personal freedom. The conservatives are being asked to give up some of their religious freedoms (definition of marriage, definition of a specific right/wrong, teach their children the right/wrong of sexual behavior) to grant some other group a right.”

Oh please! What freedom exactly are they being asked to give up? Are homosexuals coming to conservatives homes and forcing them to marry other men? Religious freedom is not the freedom to impose your values on someone else.

James at 27 said:

To many conservatives the issue [gay marriage] is a conflict between freedom of religion versus a personal freedom. The conservatives are being asked to give up some of their religious freedoms (definition of marriage, definition of a specific right/wrong, teach their children the right/wrong of sexual behavior) to grant some other group a right.

That’s an odd definition of ‘freedom of religion’, which normally means not being prevented from practicing your religion – i.e. worshipping in whatever way you prefer – in private. The ‘freedoms’ you list – defining relationships and rights, teaching children – sound like social and political powers, not freedoms.

And it wouldn’t be very hard to get people to sign up if you made sure they were poor enough and sufficiently lacking in education.

To expand on this: the most promising device would be to put in place an economic system under which widespread unemployment is a structural inevitability. Then having done this, you could preach a morality which you know full well it is impossible, from the nature of the economic system, for large numbers of people to live up to. Like, for example, an ethic of self-reliance whereby everybody is required to be ‘self-supporting’. Then those millions of people who failed to live up to your ‘ethic’, and had failed to be ‘self-supporting’, who may or may not be distinguishable on racial grounds, might then be treated as monstrously as you wished, cut off from the mainstream of society, forced to sign up to ludicrous and demeaning state programmes, herded into camps or prisons, whatever. A labour camp system operated through public-private partnership, you might say.

John Holbo: My point is simply that FORCING people to accept small government is no less coercive, if the whole point of bringing it about it so induce desirable values.

But where does Murray propose FORCING people to accept small government? Which paragraphs? How would that even work?

Barry: And adding onto Jim Harrison’s point, the right doesn’t like small government. They just disagree on what to do, and whom to tax.

Agreed. Which is why I’m not a conservative.

roy belmont: This is coercion as force solely, but what about coercion by seduction? Coercion is making people do what you want them to.

Seduction is not coercion — it’s persuasion. Political coercion is a bad thing. Political persuasion is the way things are supposed to work. One of the big problems with lefties is that they so frequently confuse the two (which seems to be why they’re sometimes suspicious of this whole ‘free speech’ concept — because, you know, the helpless masses can be so easily confused, tricked, and seduced. Really the poor things are so easily manipulated that there’s not much difference between getting them to do what you want with a slick marketing campaign than by pointing guns at them).

JH in aqua #6: “Yes, it is fair to point out that a small government can only get SO bad.”
It got pretty bad in Ireland in the 1840s. Remember, the British Governments of the time weren’t some well-intentioned but slovenly Bourbon ancien régime that could barely organise its way out a paper bag but an intelligent and efficient group of ultraliberal ideologues. Look how they handled the 1844 banking crisis.

What’s next in Europe’s descent into the inferno? The Comfy Chair?

Liberal fascism! I think it was John Emerson who, echoing Orwell, invoked the prospect of a cookie being thrust into a child’s face – forever!

Slocum“. Really the poor things are so easily manipulated that there’s not much difference between getting them to do what you want with a slick marketing campaign than by pointing guns at them”

A new Newsweek poll out this weekend exposed “gaps” in America’s knowledge of history and current events. Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?”
http://tiny.cc/oDvCN
Poor things indeed.

Sam C at 31. “That’s an odd definition of ‘freedom of religion’, which normally means not being prevented from practicing your religion – i.e. worshipping in whatever way you prefer – in private. ”

The definition of ‘Freedom of Religion’ includes public.

Sam C at 31 / Mitchell Rowe at 32:

The Religious Conservative thought process is as follows:

– Conservatives believe that laws, at some point, are the use of State power to enforce a morality. Liberals tend to define this as the use of State power to coerce a behavior. (Legislation of behavior = Legislation of morality ).
– Religious Conservatives believe that marriage is a religious institution that was co-opted by the State. The definition at the time of co-opt was one which matches the Conservatives religious beliefs. (Marriage is a religious tenet that did not include same sex marriage)
– A group other than the for mentioned Religious Conservatives wishes to expand /change the definition of marriage to include same sex partners. (Expand = Change).
– Therefore: Some other group is attempting to use State power to enforce their morality and/or religious beliefs on the Religious Conservatives. (Right to have a sex act recognized by State vs. Right exlcude State from defining/enforcing a religious belief).

In Liberal speak it works like this:

– State power is intended to coerce a proper behavior.
– A fundamental behavior of a civilization is to facilitate the non-violent interaction of different cultures.
– Enough Muslims (ie small minority, few, etc) act with violence when the religious tenet of insulting the prophet Muhammad is broken that this is a threat to the non-violent interaction of different cultures.
– Therefore: Respect of Religions should be made law. (Establishment of a religious tenet vs. Freedom of Speech).

But if the every school were a state school, and Charles Murray were the Secretary Dictator of Education, he really would be in a position to have his way.

The Secretary of Education does not unilaterally dictate all policy related to education. More specifically, the Secretary of Education would not have the authority to insist on anything approaching what you suggest (and yes, I am recognizing your sarcastic hyperbole and mentally translating it into reasonable concern before I say this).

On the other hand, until fairly recently, most prestigious private universities — without government interference! — very successfully kept all black persons out of their collective student body. This was regardless of I.Q. or other qualifications.

Yes, John has found Murray out: he’s a liberal. (As we all are, aren’t we?) Why is this surprising?

One problem for John is that what he calls the Ur-argument for conservativism is instead just an instance of the more general conservative use of the slippery slope argument in defense of the status quo. Standing athwart history and shouting stop, and all that, which is quite a bit different from standing against liberal/progressive politics and shouting never again.

For example, Murray has recently proposed replacing Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and other social welfare programs with a cash grant to each individual over the age of 21. The conditions of receipt would include the purchase of health insurance, and retirement savings would be encouraged. The grant value would be reduced above relatively moderate income thresholds. It’s an interesting idea, the purposes of which are largely consistent with the thoughts Murray shared in this speech. But the appropriate conservative response (again, on the terms above) would, it seems to me, be skepticism about the wisdom of such a large re-ordering of our affairs. It may be that, after full consideration, the step is worth taking. And of course a conservative might find small steps in that direction to be particularly appealing. But regardless, the initial response to such a radical proposal would/should be skepticism.

The question in this case isn’t, why didn’t we see that kind of reaction from Golberg and Douthat and others. It’s, why did John expect to see it? And I can’t help but think it’s because John has badly misunderstood and mischaracterized Murray’s speech.

John says that Murray made the following argument: “What this enlightened elite should do is use the government (i.e. by forcibly shrinking it) to induce those who are deluded by false values to accept the true ones.”

Murray doesn’t argue for anything like this at all. Instead he says that the American elite are busy (following John) ‘summoning the New Man onto the stage of American history’, and he wishes and hopes they’ll stop. Not because what they’re doing will lead to or tends to bad authoritarianism (as opposed to the other kind?)–Europe, Murray says, is “not groaning under the yoke of an evil system”–but because it would be better for Americans if they stopped trying to make the US like Europe. Why should Goldberg or Douthat or any other Burkean object to that?

I think John’s wrong on some other things as well. Murray says that science will lead people to change their minds. Getting coercion out of the ability of research to change minds is more than a little stretch of the term. But I’ve gone on too long as it is.

But John, as Murray presents it, it’s the elites who want a European style life, and the masses who reject it. Again, you continue to mischaracterize his argument. Murray says, “Why do I focus on the elites in urging a Great Awakening? Because my sense is that the instincts of middle America remain distinctively American. ” He may well be wrong, but that’s no reason to get his argument wrong.

And I don’t think it’s right to say that Murray hopes the scales will fall from peoples live and they’ll live more fulfilled lives. I think Murray would say that most Americans live precisely that the sort of lives he says they’d prefer, but only the elites who don’t. The elites, he thinks, might be persuaded by evidence. Again, whether the argument is right or wrong, we should get our descriptions right.

It’s because you have gotten his argument so horribly wrong that you think Goldberg and Douthat are caught on the horns of a dilemma. Get the argument right and the dilemma goes away.

John, not to be obstinate, but did you read the speech? Did you reach the bit I quoted? Your view of what the great mass of Americans want and Murray’s view are obviously quite different. But you don’t get to attribute your view to him for purposes of describing his argument.

Murray’s speech is smug claptrap designed to make rich people feel good about themselves.

First, let’s be clear about what Murray says: “The center still holds. It’s the bottom and top of American society where we have a problem.” I don’t read that as a call for an awakening in the middle. Rather, Murray calls for an awakening of the elites because he wants them to stop trying to change America (and also because he thinks they’d live better/happier lives). And the point of the bit you just quoted is that they have disproportionate influence on where the country is headed, not on where it is now.

I confess I don’t know what Murray would say about what motivates voters in what he calls the center. Perhaps he’d say that they didn’t like the economic conditions in November, but they didn’t thereby intend to abandon their views about America? He might say that there views about America are more foundational and more fixed than their preference for president on November day, and so, to the extent there’s a conflict between the two, we should resolve (and should expect them to want to resolve) in favor of the foundational.

In any case, I think you mean this as a defense of your misinterpretation. It may be that Murray’s speech should have grappled with or been about “how the center has been lost” or some such. Murray may be wrong about the center, his speech may be a bad argument because he didn’t address an obvious topic. But it simply isn’t the case that he addressed it as you say he did.

Some people just want a Government small enough to fit into your bedroom.

Well on that note, I’d add, saying you want a small government is as nonsensical as saying you want a small penis. When what you really need at a minimum, is at least something big enough to do the job satisfactory.

Nearly all people find themselves at the bottom of a slippery slope when it comes to sexuality, finding practically any alternative unplatable. For most of us the rest state is mixed-sex coupling; for a fraction we can no longer ignore it’s same-sex, and it seems that most of either group is disinclined to slide from one state to the other.

When my nephew revealed his godlessness to his father-in-law, he was asked “then what keeps you from [having sexual congress with] your dog?” It isn’t a slippery slope, or at least not a downhill one. There’s the question of consent (how do you know she loves you?) and the necessity of toenail-clipping.

I only wish we were on a slippery slope to socialism. Unfortunately, I think that getting to universal health care is going to be a long, hard, uphill struggle.

1) it should be pointed out that wanting a “european” lifestyle is not something only elites do. it is what the masses do- -in europe. they really like their lives. this is why murray must override the desires of the masses (euro) as well as the elites, for their own good.

2) i don’t think an accounting of conservative hypocrisy can get far without attending to gender. i. e. when you ask, “why do wingers accept coercion x but not coercion y,” the answer is frequently “because x means being forced by daddy, so as unpleasant as it may be, we must do it and then in the long rim we’ll be a man, my son. but y is being forced by mommy! eeeeek! nanny state! she’s going to emasculate us!”

i just think a lot is explained bythe elements of misogyny and gender-panic.

also: as great as the term “dark satanic millian” is, for this particular issue i do think “donner party conservatism” is by far the better handle.

I think kid bitzer’s right and it’s also revealing just how low an opinion Murray has of men. When we get to Murray’s hypothetical janitor:

A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life…If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away.

Such a man to Murray doesn’t get happiness from his religion or his vocation (and at least in traditional Christian thought, even menial jobs can be vocations). And he doesn’t get happiness from the thought that his partner and children will be protected if he dies or get sick or is made unemployed, which you would think would be an obvious form of love. Murray’s janitor only gets satisfaction if he is the centre of his little world: he would rather have the possibility of his orphaned children starve in the streets if it means that his ego gets fed in the here and now.

I don’t know what Murray’s views say about real janitors: I know they say a lot about Murray.

I thought it was accepted generally on the left and right that American elites had disproportionate interest, and that public policy and culture are largely (but not entirely) determined by them.

USian right-wingers do perhaps accept this in private but in public they don’t seem to: it’s a quick and simple way for them to troll themselves out of any serious or honest public discussion about power in America. Oh you lefties think that The People are stupid and helpless! Elitists! False consciousness Marxisses! For an example of this I refer you to the Slocum’s ‘contributions’ to this thread (final para of #35 for example), indeed, to any number of past threads…

“I think kid bitzer’s right”
thanks, magistra, that cheers me right up.

there’s a less gender-focused way to say something similar:
donner-party conservatives seem to have accepted the nietzschean claim that man wants struggle, not happiness. (i actually think anything useful in that insight is better captured by the millian view that happiness is in part constituted by struggle, alternating with tranquility).

what’s odd is not the conservative adoption of nietzsche, but the poverty of their understanding of the possibilities for human struggle.

they really seem to be concerned that if we did not have to struggle for food, shelter and health, we would have completely run out of struggles. we would just become idle blobs (this underlying conservative fantasy is part of what vitiates the second half of wall-e–once our needs are attended to, we become idle and feminized–more body-fat, rounded features, etc.)

but from the progressive standpoint, it seems just as likely that the removal of one kind of struggle would simply make it possible for more people to take on more interesting struggles. people who don’t have to search for food can try to prove theorems or write concertos or build pyramids. or just struggle to bring food and health to the rest of the globe, which is going to take a lotta lotta struggle. (it may be no accident that medecins sans frontiers was founded by those filthy welfare-state french people).

will some people, relieved of the anxiety of survival, turn into blobs? sure. some people do that when they are faced with the existential struggle for food, too. in the history of the species, grinding poverty has seldom been ennobling; it has just as often led to selfishness, dishonesty, servility, and petty predation on the weak. “it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright,” as ben franklin said.

so the insight that struggle is valuable to human existence is distorted by an inability to see that those for whom struggle is valuable will always find new struggles, and possibly more interesting struggles, when alleviated of the struggle for food and health.

there’s also some unexamined ideology in the donner-party view about which struggles are “natural” and so good and which are “voluntary” and so less-good. but it won’t hold up to scrutiny.

Burkeans are anti-materialist and anti-bourgeois and as such anti-capitalist.
But Burkeans are also anti-liberal, in the sense that liberals are bourgeois -vulgar- materialists.
They have a an argument against both AEI and CT (and the “reality based” communitariat.)

I rather liked Murray’s paragraphs on meaning. it calls to mind the whig historian lrical flights anent Anglo-Saxon Yeomanry. The glorious dance around the maypole gemenischaft of it all, only ruined by those rationalistic system-minded capitalists and their nasty enclosure act geselschaftism. A very good case can be made that a locaL joint stock company spells the end of freedom and community volunteerism
I’ve seen several effective local charities destroyed by government services that relieved local citizens of the task by providing the same service. And costs ballooned 3-500% in the bargain, due mostly to paperwork So today when I’m on the board of a charity, I fight to have them avoid government grants or even outside private philanthropy. Beware of grant writers bearing gifts.
Nonetheless, Murray’s case is not compelling. There is no inherent reason why sensible government safety nets must necessarily crowd out local initiatives. Whether or not we continue the kind of voluntary associationism so admired by Toqueville probably depends more on TV and relentless consumerism than on the Feds providing food stamps.

sometimes murray et al. romanticize misery for the sake of happiness in such a way that you wonder, “and what’s the point of all this? what are they after, really?”

and then sometimes his ilk are more explicit about part of what they are after: empire, and keeping it.

this was an explicit part of the neo-con platform. the last paragraph of herodotus has cyrus telling us that ‘soft regions breed soft men,’ so that physical struggle is the price of keeping empire. if we get too comfortable, the worry goes, then some hungrier people, probably brown (it’s usually racial not too far below the surface) will take our empire from us.
(and straussians are just as bad at reading herodotus as they are at reading plato, so they take the word of cyrus to be the wisdom of herodotus.)

it’s a typical late-empire anxiety about losing hold of empire, even as you enjoy the fruits of empire. you can see it in roman literature, you can see it in victorian england (my quotation of kipling above was not random).

people like murray are slightly too polite to put it this way. that’s why they really don’t seem to have *any* good argument for why we should force our populace to be miserable. they mumble unconvincing things about ‘character’ and ‘meaning’. but look at the people who lap this up, the goldbergs and the nro crowd. they’re playing boys own adventure, alright, but they’re also playing empire, and who will keep it for us.

It isn’t about the machines, or even the power, it’s about the men who run those machines and their attitudes toward existence and the world.

This was great, but I think the statements were misdirected at Chris. I didn’t see any such dismissal in his comment.

salient:
When Chris said:”Of course, romanticizing the lives of simple folk is a tradition of sorts. But Murray is not pretending that lives of sorrow, hunger, illness, and toil are other than they are. Rather, he celebrates precisely those painful possibilities as necessary conditions for meaningful happiness. This is not romanticism; this is hypocrisy.”my reading was Chris, while opposing Murray for hypocrisy, also opposed him for seeming to champion, hypocritically, “simple lives”. Thus finding myself surrounded, if not indeed betrayed and alone on the field, I struck, like blind Ajax, at the enemy closest to my flank. If Chris was not in that circumstance actually flying the dark banner I apologize to him and any other reader for the unnecessary bloodshed and gore.
But I think he did, is, and comes from a tradition that instead of romanticizing that “simple lives” cliche, depreciates it, and the world it inhabits and creates. And thus sees Murray as dangerous for his advocacy of a return to simple if not primitive values, which he, Chris, seems to find dangerous, so he points out Murray’s hypocrisy in that regard.
Whereas I’m seeing Murray as dangerous because he’s seriously inaccurate in his estimations and perceptions, and because he sounds like a leading whisperer in the renascent campaign for a eugenic restructuring of the human population.

The essential dishonesty of the anti-utopian argument is the pretense that all utopians insist on that “relatively short order.” Since of course no great change is possible in short order, conservatives deny that great change is possible at all—things must remain as they are, or change very slightly and slowly.

Utopians understand perfectly well that change can only happen gradually. But radical change is possible, given sustained energy and commitment. So let’s start.

One doesn’t much find unbridled enthusiasm for utopianism much these days. Indeed, it seems more familiar to me from a particular variety of social conservatism than it does from the left.

Anyway, I’ve come to believe that these broad political affiliations are more the product of, even limited to, personal temperment than to the intellectual abstractions by which they are usually engaged.

It seems clear to me that the dominant impulse behind conservatism is a form of traditionalism, a yearning for an idealized version of the past. Likewise, the dominant impulse behind liberalism[1] is a form of progressivism, a yearning for an idealized version of the future. Both are utopian.

Conservatism may yearn for radical change, but it’s nominally change to a known state, a past state. It mistrusts anything that is truly unfamiliar or new. Liberalism also yearns for radical change, but it mistrusts old solutions to problems and privileges the new and untried.

This framework entirely avoids the issues by which this matter is usually examined: individualism, liberty, egalitarianism, economics, etc. I avoid them because I don’t think that any, or at least most, of these things are truly inherent to determining the broad liberal/conservative continuum. Indeed, in each case of these particular political philosophies, one can find strains of both liberalism and conservatism that support or oppose it. There is individualistic and anti-individualistic conservatism. Just so with liberalism. How liberalism and conservatism tend to fall on these issues is specific to time and place and history. Thus, in the US, discussions of conservatism and liberalism are obsessed with size of government and individual liberties. And those engaged in these discussions wrongly believe that their particular matrix of concerns defines conservatism and liberalism for everyone, everywhere, and everywhen.

For my part, I have great difficulty being enthusiastic about either an idealized past or an idealized future. I have no particular affinity for either tried or untried solutions. Furthermore, I have little interest in utopianism, instinctively feeling that it’s predicated upon a simplistic conception of human nature. I simply believe in a politics that will make more peoples’ lives better than they presently are. And it seems to me that these two temperments—the yearning for an idealized past and an idealized future—are both manifestations of a kind of social alienation; a manifestations of at least a moderate contempt for both what is, and for those who accept what is.

1. I use the term “liberalism” with reservations in this context. It’s less than ideal because, obviously, it has a very strong connection to a particular political philosophy that I am at pains to disconnect from the broad affiliations I’m trying to describe. Likewise, “leftism” isn’t a good fit, either. “Progressivism” is most literally appropriate; but connotatively inappropriate. So I just chose “liberalism” and included this footnote.

Salient:
We’d need to get (A) expanded considerably before I’d wave it around.
There’s an integration with those simple things, a lived fullness of integration with them that’s vital. There are of course people who haved lived nasty brutish short lives of squalid wretchedness. Still are in some environments today.
But the noble savage isn’t simply a fantasy cliche, anymore than music and laughter were invented by farmers with surplus crops and consequent leisure time. If nobility can be said to exist at all in human beings it’s been with us for a long time, longer than settlements and permanent housing for sure.
It was Chris’ immediate linkage of “sorrow, hunger, illness, and toil” with “simple lives” that got me. It’s a truism I reject adamantly, and the rest of my response follows – the disdain for wild lives and places, the almost sexual urge toward dominance of the wilderness, the soiling of the whole terran sky, etc. Any regard for how so-called primitives conducted themselves needs to reflect the cost of the things we have so much better now. Mostly it doesn’t.

“This is not romanticism; this is hypocrisy”
Are none of you are aware of the difference between capitalism and monarchism? That the original conservatives were monarchists and not petit bourgeois shopkeepers or their children ?? cf. Maggie Thatcher and Charles Murray. Burkeans to be Burkeans have no place at AEI. That bourgeois conservatives pretend otherwise is simple hypocrisy. It drives me nuts when modern “conservatives” argue that Tocqueville is one of them. The man would be horrified by the vulgarity of his “defenders. ” Murray’s amalgam of Burke and the moral virtues of creative destruction is perverse. But no more perverse than the pretense of left wing Weberianism.
The fight between you and AEI is for the disambiguation of experience and the bureaucratization of life at the hands of either big business or big government. Either way it’s the rule of intellectual generalizations and bright red tomatoes with the interior texture of congealed wheat paste. Either way all good wine the world over will have the Robert Parker stamp of approved taste parameters. But being proud technocrats you don’t even see the joke; any more than the dimwits at AEI can see it.
You dream of freedom but the facts cry out: determinism.
The whole thing is nothing but tragedy.

What’s so complicated here? They are something like drug addicts, the European commoners. Social democrats here add this harmful soc1alist substance into the water and it makes the commoners happy, lazy, and apathetic. Eventually Morlocks will eat them all.

someone has false consciousnesses on the internets!

Now I’m becoming confused. What does the slippery slope argument have to do with false consciousness? Nothing at all. The argument may well be a weak one, for the reasons you’ve given, but it needn’t involve any claim of, or even discussion of or reference to, false consciousness.

In my view, a claim of false consciousness is a particular kind of explanatory claim typically made by–yes, it’s true–Marxists and socialists and such. The extension of the term that you propose not only isn’t necessary to the slippery slope argument, it isn’t necessary to your argument against the slippery slope argument. If the term is as meaningless as you suggest–it there is no way to separate allegations of false consciousness and everyday political and moral disagreement, I say take that up with the Marxists and socialists and such. Extending a meaningless term seems to just compound the problem. (And, yes, the extension is as trivial as I said. I’m talking about the fact of pluralism, not offering any particular view on political or moral pluralism. Every disagreement in the world would be the sort of thing that gives rise to the charge, and in a world of pervasive disagreements, that makes the charge trivial. It would have no explanatory power at all. Why is China communist? False consciousness. Why are corporate tax rates lower in Ireland than in the US? False consciousness. Why does the US not have universal health care? False consciousness. Why is he a progressive? False consciousness. Why is he a Buddhist? False consciousness. And so on, and on.)

You asked, “what, if not false consciousness, could explain widespread desire for a system that is ‘dysfunctional, incapable of providing the goods of human life’?”

And now you provide an answer: “There’s more than false consciousness to life, after all. There’s also bad faith! There are obviously many possible explanations besides ‘false consciousness’, in my expanded sense.”

Without saying more about your defense of an extended definition of ‘false consciousness’, it shouldn’t be at all controversial to suggest it’s unlikely that Murray was attributing false consciousness to his opponents in the novel sense you describe.

Re #76 and others: this is going to be quite a rant, so bear with me. I’m finding that I’m gradually tuning out to ideological discussions in the US context, since I struggle to accept the terms that are being used. I count myself as a North European liberal. By that I mean that I want to see a relatively small government, strong protection for individual liberties, but nonetheless certain welfare services, such as a generously and publicly funded school system. This last point is why I don’t count myself as a libertarian. Nor would I ever dream of calling myself a conservative. One line of argument in favour of a relatively small state is that it helps people realise certain values that are objectively good, whether they desire them or not (such as hard work, experiencing both the ups and downs of life etc, instead of sitting in one’s comfy liberal Malung armchair from Ikea). I reject this approach as conservative. Another line of argument is that a relatively small state is the state most compatible with value neutrality and allowing people to realise their (subjectively held) life projects. This is the line I take, and this is what I take to be the most plausible liberal line.

So when Tom West says that he knows better than other people what to do and that he is going to impose his version of the good on people after his guys have won a democratic election, my spontaneous answer is to say: well, that’s a social democratic approach to the good, not a liberal one. If there’s one point I’d like to make, it’s that from a European perspective, keeping liberals and social democrats apart is as easy as (or sometimes much easier than) keeping liberals and conservatives apart.

And this is what I do take to be the totalitarian tendency of social democracy, to the extent that there is one. European social democrats (especially in, say, the Nordic countries) have traditionally found it hard or impossible to accept that people should have rights that they can uphold in a court of law, even in the face of democratically made majority decisions. One might defend this on perfectionist grounds. Thus, in Sweden some social democrats argued in the 1980s that satellite television should be forbidden, partly because it contained ads directed to children (which are forbidden in Sweden) and partly, as I understand it, because English skills would be unevenly distributed in the country because children in rich families would be able to watch English-language channels more than those in poor families (!). But if we have wide-stretched and constitutionally protected freedom of information, one might not be able to enact such laws. And this is bad, these social democrats would say.

Liberals, on the other hand, would want to say that there are certain rights which shouldn’t be vulnerable to governmental intrusion. This not only helps more people realise their life projects, but also helps defend against a creeping totalitarian development of society. The realisation that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely, is, I believe, fundamentally a liberal one.

My gut reaction is to say that there is a totalitarian tendency in any attempt to say: “We know what is best for you, and we are going to use the forces of government to impose this on you, and we don’t care what you think.” I believe that this tendency is significantly stronger within social democracy than within liberalism. The discussion of the last 20 years among political philosophers about legitimacy, public justification and sensitivity to diversity and pluralism has ultimately been a liberal one, motivated by liberal concerns. In practical politics, social democracy remains a modernist movement, rooted in the belief that there exists a right way forward and that it should be the task of the state to bring it about. There are such tendencies within liberalism and general “socialism” as well, but they have to compete with accounts that are more sensitive to pervasive diversity. (And I know that liberal academic political philosophy might not be compared 1:1 with social democratic ideas as they express themselves in the real world. But I still think the general point holds.)

(This argument obviously needs some qualification, but I’m not sure how much. If we have a somewhat positive account of liberty, we can actually follow the Millian criterion of drawing the border of some people’s liberty only when they damage that of other people. In other words, we never have to leave a liberty-centred discourse to follow Tom in saying that we’re going to ignore some people’s liberty without any benefit for others’. Also, I’m perfectly well aware that there are a lot of perfectionist liberals out there. I don’t agree with them.)

(Forcing people not to have something they think they want is no less coercive than forcing them to have something they don’t think they want.)

Why? Let’s say that Joe Bloggs wants to have sex with Paris Hilton, could easily overpower her by force, and has no moral qualms about rape if he can’t get what he wants voluntarily. Paris Hilton doesn’t want to have sex with Joe Bloggs. Do you really want to argue that it is equally as bad to send the police in to forcibly prevent Joe Bloggs from raping Paris Hilton as it is for Joe Bloggs to rape Paris Hilton?

How about a less-nasty case? I really really like the Hope Diamond, which I saw at the Smithsonian Museum. Is it really coercive that I can’t have it?

Tracy W at 113: ‘I really really like the Hope Diamond, which I saw at the Smithsonian Museum. Is it really coercive that I can’t have it?’

Yes, obviously. Property is a system of relations of coercion: ‘it’s not yours’ means ‘people will prevent you from taking and using it, by force if necessary’. That, in itself, doesn’t tell us anything about which relations of coercion it’s right to engage in, though. And this case is not analogous to the rape case, because what’s at stake there is harm, not just coercion.

The entire argument about a small state as a hedge against tyranny is invalidated by its own premises. It is pretty much constitutive of right-wing libertarianism that you want to cut back the state to its irreducible core functions of national defence and public order – that is to say, shut down everything that isn’t painted either khaki or dark blue and white, or as we feminised eurosexuals would call it, the repressive state apparatus.

After all, the whole philosophical foundation for this view is that the state begins with its monopoly of violence and grows from there, and in a sense whatever else it may do – requiring lockout-tagout standards on dangerous machine tools, counting endangered fish, preventing your neighbour from building a toxic waste dump in the back garden without your prior informed consent – is contaminated with coercion. It’s the opposite of the legal doctrine of the fruit of the poisoned tree.

But the only state activity they don’t find unacceptably violent and coercive is state violence itself. Cut the state back to the army, the cops, the courts, and jail, and you’ve still got a toolkit for tyranny, in the absence of effective democratic control of the executive branch. In fact, that’s the only thing you *can* do with the libertarian state – repress. All the other options are greyed out.

Further, what are these higher aims that we are meant to aspire to? Anything in the way of public service is ruled out by definition. The obvious one is to go into business, but isn’t that just the shameless worship of wealth? Could it possibly be war? I rather think it is.

Sam C. Yes, obviously. Property is a system of relations of coercion: ‘it’s not yours’ means ‘people will prevent you from taking and using it, by force if necessary.”

Well no, not obviously. The difference is that not having the Hope Diamond still leaves me free to do a vast variety of other things with my life, while if I was forced to own diamonds without the simple option of selling or “losing” them I would have to take on all the hassles of owning diamonds.

And this case is not analogous to the rape case, because what’s at stake there is harm, not just coercion.

This is my point. Forcing people to do something is, all other things being equal, more harmful than forcing people not to do something. Of course in most comparisons not all other things are equal, a strangler could be described as forcing someone not to breath and that is worse than say forcing someone to pay taxes as not breathing for a few minutes cuts off all the other options of what you can do with your life, while paying taxes still leaves a lot of opportunities available (leaving aside cases where nasty governments have used taxes to try to starve off political opposition). But when we come to the same acts (having sex against your will, not having sex against your will), it strikes me that the coercion comparison is inequal.

John Holbo – yes, both are coercion. But the distinction between forcing people not to do something, and forcing them to do something is important. Paris Hilton is more harmed by being forced to have sex than Joe Bloggs is harmed by being forced not to have sex. On thinking about it, I think I quoted the wrong bit of the original post, I should have quoted:
Coercion is as coercion does. Bringing about small government, on the grounds that this will eventually induce others to accept your superior value system, is just as ‘coercive’, in the relevant sense, as bringing about big government to do that.
I’m arguing that the relevant sense does in fact include a distinction at least according to our inclinations.

Tracy:

I’m not sure about your forcing to do versus forcing not to do – or rather positive and negative unfreedoms. I think this distinction you’re making can be very easily blown up as purely semantic, in that every action of forcing to not do can be construed as forcing to do.

To use your Paris Hilton/Joe Bloggs scenario. The positive anti-freedom here is rape, but I think the negative anti-freedom could well be castration or forcible installation of a chastity belt. Since the violations of the body are now equalized, the distinction collapses.

Furthermore, I think a historical perspective really puts the lie to this one. Historical examples of negative anti-freedoms almost always manifest as positive anti-freedoms. Take the example of the disenfrachisement of African-Americans between 1877-1965. This was a negative-anti-freedom, in that African-Americans were being forced not to vote. However, this became a positive anti-freedom in two ways. First, the consequences: not having the right to vote meant being forced to attend unequal schools and being forced to live in substandard housing and take substandard pay (not having the legislative power to alter your circumstances), being forced to pay taxes and obey laws without your consent, and so on. Second, the mechanism of enforcement – in order to bar African-Americans from voting, it was necessary to use both legal and extra-legal violence (force directed against the body), economic intimidation (indirect force directed against the body), and similar mechanisms.

I think the point of enforcement mechanisms is the most important, because in reality, you can’t really force people not to do something without forcing them to do something else, and that’s usually backed by force and the threat of force.

Tracy W: none of what you say in response to my 115 speaks to the point. You asked whether your not being allowed to have the Hope diamond was coercive. The answer to that question is yes. There are then further questions about whether it’s bad as well as coercive, and if so, how bad by comparison with other sorts of coercion, or other bad things, you might be subject to. But the answers to those questions don’t affect the fact that the institution of property is a system of relations of coercion.

I should state my belief about the possibility of recovering from rape is based on stories like Sabine Dardenne’s, who survived 3 months of rape and imprisonment, and my feminist-driven nauseation at the idea that a woman’s purity is more important than what she herself does with her own life – those Ancient Roman stories where a woman killed herself because she was raped disgust me. I’ve never been raped myself and I don’t know how I would cope with it if I was. But then I’ve never been castrated either, and I think I am at drastically lower risk of that (can you castrate a woman?)

Sam C at 114

While I sympathize with your position, however it runs into two pre-existing barriers.

Since the time of Locke, Western Governments have readily established several laws in which they override an individual freedom for a perceived moral good. An example of this which you may approve of is the establishment of Hate speech laws. The bright line restriction on the establishment of a morality based law versus an individual right has already been moved. How do you tell a Religious Conservative that “…the right of religious freedom, specifically, is not a right to use public power to enforce moral/religious views” when it has been established that random philosophical positions have used State power to enforce moral views.

The second problem is the State willingness to contravene the private practice of religion in order establish some other desired good. Again, a US example is, in New Mexico a photographer was sued and fined $7000 for refusing to take pictures of a same sex wedding. It is unreasonable to expect Religious Conservatives to view “freedom of religion” as a private act if the power of the State is being used to interfere with the actual practice. (think PETA and requiring them to wear fur coats, etc.)

I think if I cared I would read Murray for myself.

And Salient, thanks again. Should have followed your lead on that.