In just over a week’s time I am to give a talk in Brussels, courtesy of the Centre for the New Europe, on the subject of Why Libertarians Don’t Talk About Culture – And Why They Should.
When you are extremely grand, you let things like this come and go with no comment from you other than the occasional “oh yes, that, yes, I think it’s on the fifteenth, I’m not sure” (it is on the fifteenth), or “oh that, yes, I’d forgotten all about it”. But if you are me, you make the most of these sort of invites. If I don’t tell everyone I am doing this talk, who else will?
Here is the blurb I sent to my hosts about it:
Libertarians don’t believe in either subsidising or censoring cultural activity, so for libertarians it often doesn’t matter what they personally think about any particular cultural object or enterprise. Good or bad, it should neither be encouraged nor prohibited by the political process. So long as you don’t infringe against the rights of others, you can enjoy “culture” any way you like, or in no way at all.
For collectivists on the other hand, the goodness or badness of a particular cultural enterprise is a burning issue, because the collective must decide what sort of culture to encourage or discourage. So, they talk about culture a lot.
The result is that libertarians often appear philistine, shallow and one-dimensional, while collectivists can seem far more cultured and attractive. So, we libertarians ignore culture at our peril.
I have already ruminated on this topic here, in this posting, and the blurb above owes much to those ruminations.
Maybe another reason why libertarians are a little reluctant to talk about culture is that we fear that quarrels about inessentials, like how good the Lord of the Rings really is, are liable to undermine team spirit amongst us to no purpose. That is a mistake, I think, but maybe some libertarians feel that.
I think that the claim in part one of my talk’s title, that libertarians do not talk about culture, may now be becoming obsolete. With the Internet, blogging etc., we libertarians now have a means of chatting away about movies and literature and stuff, in a very congenial and magazine-like setting, yet without all the bother of anyone having to put together an actual magazine – which is a total nightmare compared to running a blog. The reason we used not to talk about culture was simply that it was too difficult. It was all we could manage to bang away with our core agenda. Now, simply, we can do culture talk, and we do.
Well, those are my thoughts so far. Does anyone here have anything else to say about all this? I would really welcome the input.
UPDATE: This very recent comment on this posting might have something to do with why libertarians don’t discuss cultural themes. When they do, they get denounced by people saying things like this:
What does this have to do with libertarianism? I come to this blog to read libertarian views and issues, not artistic commentary.
This, to me, is a perfect example of a libertarian (if that is what Telemachus is) being boring and philistine.
I find the aversion in some quarters of the libertarian world to discussion of cultural matters very strange. In as far as culture is a vital part of human existence, to the extent that government involvement is reduced, private voluntary activities become all the more important.
Just look, for instance, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, and compare it with the British Museum or the Victoria & Albert; the prominent involvement of the higher strata of American society in the upkeep of institutions like the Met is in stark contrast to what seems, to my eyes at least, to be a complacent British attitude which can be summed up as “let the government fix it.”
I think the bottom line is that defining libertarianism as merely a matter of lone-rangers vs. collectivists is a bit too stark; man is by nature a social animal, and the proper distinction should be between voluntary collectives and the coerced kind as manifested in government. With that in mind, it is entirely proper for libertarians to wish to discuss cultural matters. I’ll go even further, and say it is vital that they do so, if only to demonstrate that a vibrant culture can flourish without the active support of the state behind it.
I fear I am one of those ‘philistine’ sort of Libertarian folks that you are worried about. It’s not that I don’t care to discuss artistic issues, it’s just that I don’t understand them.
Apart from music, cultural matters, that is, the classical forms of European culture, have never really resonated with me. Modern literature, for example, is neither entertaining nor inspiring to me, and therefore I avoid it.
However, having said all of that, I do think that it is necessary to talk about these issues at Samizdata.net, even by philistines such as myself, for the reasons articulated by Abiola above.
I’m sorry if I can’t aid you with anything new or thoughtful for your Brussels talk, but I do wish you well with the venture. It’s one of those things that sometimes make me feel like I’m living on the wrong continent.
I think the root of the problem here is in the definition of culture. There is a tendency to see culture almost exclusively in terms of things like art, music, films and so forth. Brian’s own blurb, and the posts above manifest this point of view. It is for this reason that many libertarians dismiss cultural issues as matters of personal taste, and therefore of no relevance to libertarian politics.
To put it mildly, this is a shallow, and in my opinion, dangerous way to think about culture. Culture is far more than just the surface manifestation of entertainment and art. Culture is the centuries of living and experience of a given people, their understanding of thermselves, their sense of history and shared crises , their way of doing things, their way of understanding the world around them, and their religious traditions.
It is not an accident that classical liberalism and libertarianism have taken hold primarily, and firstly amongst English/British peoples and the wider Anglosphere. The concepts of limited government, individual rights, due process, and property rights have there roots in Anglo-Saxon and Celtic culture.
This is not to say that the same ideas cannot take hold anywhere else, but some cultural ground will be fertile soil, and others will not, unles that culture undergoes major change. This is one of the serious blind spots of much libertarian thinking. Many libertarians talk as though culture has no bearing at all on poltical issues. But it does, and one only has to witness the difficulty in Iraq to see that.
It is this blind spot that leads many (though thankfully not all) libertarians to assume that mass immigration is of no relevance to libertarians because the cutlure of immigrants is also of no relevance. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of immigration, it is vital that all libertarians take the issues raised by the cultural change that large scale immigration brings seriously, and undertsand that such change has poltical implications.
The American experience does however give hope that classical liberal values and ideas can take hold amongst peoples of widely different cultures, but only if those cultures adopt a larger meta-culture of shared national values. Libertarians need to think of strategies for achieving this, and this means taking cultural issues far more seriously than they have so far.
Brian – I couldn’t add anything to Abiola’s elegant post.
But, I do think you Samizdats are beginning to spend w-a-a-a-a-y too much time in Brussels.
Surely culture is merely the sum total of the elements of any grouping under discussion, insofar as it has evolved up to the point that it is being discussed? Even then it is very much the personal perception of each individual discussing it, or thinking about it. Like life; history; ugliness and beauty, culture is in the eye of the beholder. Whatever you do, or fail to do, will influence the culture of your country, your ethnic grouping, your religion, etc. but only in conjunction with a myriad other inputs over which you have no control whatsoever. So it seems to me that we can only rejoice when we are part of a culture that has evolved as beneficent, inclusive, flexible, just and progressive – or mourn when we find ourselves a part of a disintegrated mishmash of conflicting interests ruled by barbarians.
When we elect politicians who are cultural vandals intent on destroying those elements of our culture that stand in the way of larger ideological groupings in order increase their power over others, we deserve what transpires. Until recently the framework of common and statutory laws of Britain provided the stanchions to which our culture was firmly tethered and therefore, to a great degree, shaped. Now even those stanchions are being ripped out or tampered with: the whole canopy of protection and stability that we once enjoyed is being rent asunder. As I look back over seventy years of actual life and having read some, but never enough, of Britain’s history, we seem to have reached the point where the culture, strength and courage of a nation, that was once the envy of other groupings, has greatly dissipated. In its place solipsism, confusion, conflict and fear. The recent outpourings of mob sentimentality and pacifist cowardice displayed on the streets of England augurs very badly for future generations, and it all amounts to the grossest of insults towards those brave souls from Britain and its allies whose bones litter the graveyards of the chaotic continents to the east of us as a result of their efforts to retain our culture and freedom.
A New Leftist cultural hegemony is in the making and the great unwashed is largely unaware of it. It seems to me that there is no political party currently sufficiently organised in Britain to prevent this from happening. Who do I vote for to halt the cultural destruction that is underway and restore some of our past stability and civil strength? I can only hope that those of you who travel to Brussels do so to assist in the dismantling of the Gramscian dream, rather than succumbing to its influences. The Tranzi traps are everywhere in that multi-culti melange that London, under Livingstone, is fast resembling and where ‘cultural’ interests organise most of the crime and much of the crime is committed with impunity because the law is undermined by ‘cultural’ dicatates. A vicious circle indeed.
Brian,
Shawn is quite correct. You must define the culture you are to discuss. If it’s just art and entertainment, well, that’s fine but they are really no more than froth on the beer.
In it’s broadest and truest sense, culture is the expression of a people’s act of living. In that that act is in very large part determined by the nature and capacities of that people, it cannot be expressed by a different people with different natures and capacities. The left, however, cleaves to a wholly environmentlist view on this issue, claiming that there are no such differences between peoples. This is the main gateway through which the extraordinarily successful, neo-marxist assault on our culture – and our race – proceeds. It is the modern battlefield of right and left, but one from which libertarianism rather sadly exempts itself.
The answer to the question, “Why don’t libertarians talk about culture?” is, therefore: because they are ideologically attached to open borders. Libertarians will stay in this bind until they can distinguish the free movement of goods from that of people – and realise that a nation’s people might relish ten million Japanese VCR’s crossing their borders but not, I have to say, ten million Japanese.
Discussion of culture isn’t the problem. The problem is state funding and thus regulation.
To put it in a nutshell – a free society is not value neutral. It is a polycentric spontaneous order orientated by the pursuit of transcendent ideals!
Frank P – Another tour de force. Unfortunately, for people who never learned to think for themselves, the pinko tranzi hegemony is very seductive. By virtue of the depth of your Diana-esque “emotional intelligence”, you get to enjoy, effort-free, a bracing jolt of superiority. You can condemn the Queen, sneer at people who want law and order and who want control of our borders back, and sign petitions against domestic violence. You can “understand” the predicament of single mothers living on state stipends (although at the same time having absolute contempt for pensioners who worked all their lives) and can feel the pain of transsexuals who want to get their birth certificates changed to reflect their “real” sex. You can be an all-inclusive mahatama at absolutely no cost to yourself. You can not only despise everyone against who you feel inadequate, but you can get a self-righteous glow at the same time. You can, with constant prodding from Labour, look down on everyone you would once have envied, and ostentatiously elevate those on the fringes of society into role models. For example, the gay “bishop” who left his wife and children for a man.
It all seems to have happened so quickly, and the confluence has been extraordinary. In Britain, there was Diana and the ghastly Tony Blair, while in the US there was Bill Clinton feeling everyone’s pain and Hillary coming up with budget busting national health schemes to cure everyone’s pain. Then the apologists for Islamic terrorism and “root causes” sprang up simultaneously in both countries … Mainstream Christianity abandoned its principles to the point where we now have, as David Carr pointed out, the absurd Arch-hippy of Canterbury as head of the Anglican faith. And in the US, a high school student, David Lord, was removed from a student television show in December because he uttered phrase, “Have a safe and happy holiday, and God Bless.” And he was suspended from broadcasting for one month.
The wreckers of our culture have wrought havoc, but I do not see them winning.
Errmmm….sorry, but I don’t see the problem. ” Libertarians don’t talk about culture ” ? Of course not. That’s the damn point. Bong hit wonders discussing the inner beauties of Inna-Gadda-Da-Vita’s drum solo, confirmed bachelors weeping into the Amontillado over the joy of just ” that” recording of a Schubert leider, the Muslim who wishes to become the third wife, the Methodist who puts a restrictive covenant into the sale of the old Chapel, that it will never be used for the service of alcohol. These are all very different cultures. The entire point of libertarianism, at least as far as I follow it , is that the world is big enough to allow all of the above to do their thing without interference from either Govt or those who decide that their choices should not be allowed. The dope head should be allowed his dope, even though Iron Butterfly brings me out in hives, the actor his companion , his sherry and his ( yechh ) interminable baritones, that Protestant disposing of his property in the manner he wishes, even, yes, the decision of an adult to enter into whatever living arrangement they might prefer.
That is, in fact, what Libertarianism is all about. Your life, you live it. Have fun. Don’t infringe on the rights of others to do the same.
So the speech should be fairly simple. Libertarians don’t talk much about culture because we are the only people who actually believe that your or their culture is none of our business. And the only reason we should talk about it is because we also believe that our’s, your’s and their’s is none of your damn business either.
Verity,
Cultural marxism does not directly seek to wreck our culture. It seeks to delegitimise our “cultural narrative”, the transmission and repetition of which fixes minority groups as subordinate to white, male heterosexuals in western society.
Do you really think that the CM’s aren’t winning? I’d say they haven’t been offered a serious contest yet.
Brian,
The only suggestion I would offer is that you take some time in your talk to condemn utterly the repellant, collectivist, ‘blood and soil’ claptrap continually spouted by the likes of Guessedworker, Shawn, Verity, Charles Copeland and all the other quasi-nazi mythologizers posing as libertarians.
Do you take Economic Affairs, the IEA’s journal? If so, look through your back issues to here.
Good to see you back, Paul. Things were getting a little serious around here without your debonair light touch.
You really would have to be more than a little stupid to mistake anything I said for “blood and soil” Nazi ideology.
It is good that some of you have seen the bad cultural influence of the aggression by the state in intellectual and educational affairs. When people are pushed towards irrationality, and it is not their nature to be like that, musn’t it be the use of force that impels them thus. Others note how the state pushes groups into conflict. I say they do it in order to increase their power. This could explain also the diversity-idea or its state promotion; how better to set groups into hostilities? Call me monoculturalist if you like, or anti-multiculturalist, but there is a spontaneous ordering and ranking of cultural values which only state aggression can overthrow. JSBolton