Irving Kristol has been infamously credited with having been an intellectual father of Neoconservatism. He said that he was a "liberal who had been mugged by reality". Neoconservatism has received a thorough thrashing from reality between the recent turn of the century and the eight years that have followed. I'm not really interested in being critical of Irving Kristol, or the rapidly shrinking Neoconservative wing of the Republican party. It is not my intention to address them or their views here, I might save that for another time. I was just struck by the same sense of having been "mugged" by reality. Strangely I seem to be a libertarian who has been mugged by reality. I often wondered as a high school student how a free people could ever have agreed to Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to increase the size of government and bust up monopolies. If free enterprise can be undercut, then the rest of our liberties were also being placed in peril. I hope you will forgive the "slippery slope" argument here, which is of course a piece of foolishness despite any partisan affiliation it changes. Nuance and complexity may have been lost on me… I was at least in high school when I used this argument. The complex historical realities behind this move were also lost on me. What would they matter anyway to my youth, in the face of our liberties. Do we not live in the land where Patrick Henry helped give birth to a nation with courageous words. "Give me liberty or give me death" are still words that stir me deeply. Back then they were written into my heart as a seal before all else. Any history lesson raising complex problems would have been pointless from the ideological purity I brought to an issue. Pragmatism was an American virtue that I failed to appreciate at the time. Which is disappointing, because its probably the quiet backbone that built an American century. That century was a difficult one that cannot simply be painted over, and yet it was often prosperous and forward in its trajectory on some of the issues it faced. It saw women's suffrage, the voting rights act, and a number of landmark changes for the better. Regardless of how complex all of that may be, pragmatism when it has taken a long view was what made America work. We were spared the parade of "isms" that turned Europe into a slaughter, in part because of the sound direction of pragmatism and compromise, as well as the distance we had from the crisis in Europe. It also played a role in driving innovation and enterprise during that century. It was the kind of pragmatism that saw busting up monopolies integral to the creation of a middle class as an engine behind that economy. Where is that pragmatism today? Prosperity devolving under company towns in the hands of a few hoards that could easily pressure the prices for goods and labor couldn't unleash the kind of American strength we saw in that century. The idea behind busting up the monopolies was one of strength gained in promoting a broad prosperous market. What relationship does any of this have to our liberties?
I said that I was a libertarian that had been mugged by reality. I want our rights as individuals to allow us to chart our own course with out the interference of governments. I want to cultivate the notion that liberty is our right despite what others may legislate. I want to promote private spaces that allow for us to find the most efficient means to build stable and flexible communities together. It has often been said that our liberties begin and end where one person's fist meets another's face. Isn't that exactly what has been forgotten about our liberties. What is inalienable within a right flows directly from the relationship of freedom they foster between us and other rights. If they are sacrificed to the degree that they come into contact with someone else's liberties, then they are without any meaning when understood independently of each other. Our liberties don't exist for us as a property of our nature as individuals in a vacuum, but as a relationship of freedom between each of us.
Understanding the deeper relationship between our liberties, and how they operate brings me to another point. This misunderstanding has dangerously undercut the ability of our liberties to function at all as a relationship of freedom between us. We live in a global world where our collective relationships with each other come into contact with those liberties between us in an intimate way. A pragmatic understanding is desperately needed to protect those liberties as relationships caught up within reality. If I pretend that the money I have represents some fixed economic quantity of value, and that it means something that is independent of my economic relationship to you, then I am likely to be gravely disappointed by my liberties regarding economic property. What could possibly go wrong? We have watched as this liberty washed away into something completely unstable, in the wake of subprime mortgages and derivatives that were sold between banks that also held onto savings… at least for a short while they held onto savings… until those banks started collapsing. Moralizing about banks or homeowners or bailouts won't bring that liberty back. Even if your money wasn't in those banks that doesn't mean you get to escape the economic collapse that follows. It doesn't mean that your property is protected. Your fist can't bring injury upon their faces without legal consequence, but the diseases your neighbor acquires after they lose their job and health benefits could kill you. The law won't protect you against that, your health and the value of your property aren't protected. Poverty has many meanings besides the economic one, and all of them are relevant. We have watched as our freedoms have been brought closer to destruction, after a failure to recognize their global reality. "If you do not share your wealth with the poor, they will share their poverty." The reality of that cannot be moralized away by appeals to personal accountability. If a poverty of democracy allows a people to become disenfranchised, and if poverty allows education to become a scarce resource then it affects my liberty. If poverty in other countries leads to poor sewage and limits access to clean water, if poverty allows disease to spread, if poverty allows these places to collapse further into economic failure and the inevitable failure of the state that follows, and that poverty allows terrorism to find a better audience then it affects my liberty. If poverty allows for environmental devastation, and nuclear or chemical waste that pollutes our environment then it affects my liberty. If poverty shows up at the emergency ward and can't pay, If poverty provides no shelter for them or for us from them then it affects my liberty. If poverty allows for the whole globe to fall into economic collapse or international wars like we saw in the last century, as they play out in a world where distances between places are growing smaller…what remains of the freedom that our liberties were meant to protect. If each of us as individuals ignore the impoverished areas of the world, and here at home, we place all of our liberties and their ability to function within jeopardy. Yes I am a libertarian who has been mugged by reality. Pragmatism demands that I understand that my liberties are inextricably bound to those around me, rather than appealing to ideas about personal accountability as if such legal distinctions could protect my liberties in any functional meaningful way.
Understanding the deeper relationship between our liberties, and how they operate brings me to another point. This misunderstanding has dangerously undercut the ability of our liberties to function at all as a relationship of freedom between us. We live in a global world where our collective relationships with each other come into contact with those liberties between us in an intimate way. A pragmatic understanding is desperately needed to protect those liberties as relationships caught up within reality. If I pretend that the money I have represents some fixed economic quantity of value, and that it means something that is independent of my economic relationship to you, then I am likely to be gravely disappointed by my liberties regarding economic property. What could possibly go wrong? We have watched as this liberty washed away into something completely unstable, in the wake of subprime mortgages and derivatives that were sold between banks that also held onto savings… at least for a short while they held onto savings… until those banks started collapsing. Moralizing about banks or homeowners or bailouts won't bring that liberty back. Even if your money wasn't in those banks that doesn't mean you get to escape the economic collapse that follows. It doesn't mean that your property is protected. Your fist can't bring injury upon their faces without legal consequence, but the diseases your neighbor acquires after they lose their job and health benefits could kill you. The law won't protect you against that, your health and the value of your property aren't protected. Poverty has many meanings besides the economic one, and all of them are relevant. We have watched as our freedoms have been brought closer to destruction, after a failure to recognize their global reality. "If you do not share your wealth with the poor, they will share their poverty." The reality of that cannot be moralized away by appeals to personal accountability. If a poverty of democracy allows a people to become disenfranchised, and if poverty allows education to become a scarce resource then it affects my liberty. If poverty in other countries leads to poor sewage and limits access to clean water, if poverty allows disease to spread, if poverty allows these places to collapse further into economic failure and the inevitable failure of the state that follows, and that poverty allows terrorism to find a better audience then it affects my liberty. If poverty allows for environmental devastation, and nuclear or chemical waste that pollutes our environment then it affects my liberty. If poverty shows up at the emergency ward and can't pay, If poverty provides no shelter for them or for us from them then it affects my liberty. If poverty allows for the whole globe to fall into economic collapse or international wars like we saw in the last century, as they play out in a world where distances between places are growing smaller…what remains of the freedom that our liberties were meant to protect. If each of us as individuals ignore the impoverished areas of the world, and here at home, we place all of our liberties and their ability to function within jeopardy. Yes I am a libertarian who has been mugged by reality. Pragmatism demands that I understand that my liberties are inextricably bound to those around me, rather than appealing to ideas about personal accountability as if such legal distinctions could protect my liberties in any functional meaningful way.
No comments:
Post a Comment